“Sound To Movement includes several recordings made with choreographer Simone Forti, as well as some site-specific sound experiments. The A-side offers the entire performance of Big Room, a Forti/Van Riper collaboration premiered 1975, here recorded in Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art during their 1978 European tour. In this recording, Forti is heard stomping the floor around the room, performing the kind of informal/formless dance she was known for at the time. The score is for saxophones, plastic hose, flute and kalimba, all performed by Van Riper. The dancer’s footsteps and the room’s acoustic properties thus explored recalls Tom Johnson’s Nine Bells.

Other tracks further document how Van Riper’s music is about revealing various rooms’ acoustic properties and how playing saxophone is just one way of making the room sound. The mesmerizing #3 Double Sound is played on plastic hose and saxophone simultaneously, creating otherworldly resonances. The last track, Moku Gyo, is for percussion, a kind of cow bell, and just about examining how the percussion resounds in the room. On other tracks, the soprano and sopranino saxophones favored by Van Riper creates shimmering sounds echoing against the walls around him.” – Laurent Fairon