Global Story Project Feature: The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited

This post is part of our series highlighting productions from our Global Story Project.

Have you ever thought of your home town as having its own sound? What about how different your city probably sounded 90 years ago?

Moscow-based producer Charles Maynes introduces us to composer Arseny Avraamov, whose 1923 Symphony of Sirens, with no existing recordings, makes it the stuff of legend… and perfect for a creative, experimental audio piece. Take a listen to The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited:

Charles filled us in on what attracted him to Avraamov and his symphony:

“You know, this is a story I first became fixated on several years ago but had no idea how to make. How do you produce a radio story about a music performance from nearly a hundred years ago that no one had recorded? I didn’t know. And so after doing a bit of research, I decided there wasn’t enough ‘there’ to carry a story. So I did what I thought was the smart thing — I dropped it.

“I guess in that way, the title of the story — ‘Symphony of Sirens, Revisited’ — is truer than you might think. With a gentle nudge from PRX (my way of saying thanks!), this is literally me taking another swing at the Avraamov legend. I still don’t know if it ‘works’, but I do find it interesting to think, production-wise, about the little things I do now vs. what I would have done then. The conceit of the piece was to do it as a (kind of) detective story, but the mechanics of the production involved attention to transitions, pacing, and the occasional hint of audio pyrotechnics. Production tricks, in other words. They may not be good tricks, but they’re my tricks — except, of course, for the ones I stole!”