Sound is an endless conversation most often enjoyed through music. But it doesn’t really end or begin there. I love the way sound interacts with space, how the shape of a room creates resonance. I used to always wear heels in art museums just to hear how the clicks changed with each gallery.
The Sun Flights
A Duo: 2011-2015
This is where my musical career, the journey of it all, started. It was project born in a wonky, ship-like building in the industrial nowhere just north of Center City Philadelphia. The philosophical seeds were planted in long walks to high school with my best friend, Natalie Butts (guitar, vocals).
The Sun Flights: as in a flight to the sun, as in an ever-reaching movement towards the light, as in a conversation about humanity’s connection to a singular movement, again and again, around the sun. We composed in harmony, literally; every song was a harmony between me, Natalie and the guitar. We traveled all around the country singing and writing those songs for all kinds of audiences in all sorts of places.
“If questions and curiosity prompted The Sun Flights to leave on their nine month musical adventure around the country, then it’s only to be assumed that greater questions and curiosity remain. We returned with no answers whatsoever. The album is a reflection of the time we live in. It’s a small perspective of the vast landscapes and stories we shared and experienced with so people along the way. It’s hope and harmony for the hardships and truth as best as we know how to tell it.”
House of Man Artist Statement, March 2015
Sunflights Band
A Quartet: 2015–2016
Jake Hager (guitar, vocals) and Tim Leslie (percussion, vocals) played in a experimental band called Echo Sun Ensemble. The name was one of many synchronicities that led us all to play together. It was a really beautiful collaboration and melding of different sounds: all in harmony, of course.
In honor of the synchronicity we wrote:
“Synchronicity is the key to Sun Flights’ music, patterns of rhythms and words wrapped around harmony. Ideas stretched thin and then condensed. Timing. Something about the way we come together. Something about the way we fall apart.
Sun Flights’ music is conscious poetry, stories which permeate the structures of every song. These dynamic compositions give color to sonic vistas, space to explore the age old questions. Ultimately asking, what can songs say that we can’t?”
As a band we had the chance to do a couple tours around New England and the South. We played shows with old and new friends, in houses, bars and a theater with velvet curtains. We recorded a live session at WXPN’s Folkadelphia and performed our last show together at World Cafe Live.
Here’s an article, written by Fred Knittel of Folkadelphia, to share our session and announce our ending as a band: Folkadelphia Session: The Sun Flights. Below is a link to the music itself.
Solo Project
I have a handful of songs I’m still sculpting. I’ll always be sculpting them because songs are a living thing. Soon, however, I plan on making some demos and documenting them where they are.
Claire Duncombe 