Traces:Sarah (2019)
Harp and live-electronics
Commissioned by Melissa Achten
Premiere: February 2020, Poncho Hall, Cornish College of the Arts
Traces 1-4 Streaming Concert on Wayward-in-Limbo Series
Program Notes:
Traces 1-4
The four pieces that make up the TRACES series might be considered ghost stories. In my youth I was obsessed with Harry Houdini, especially his interactions with Sir Conan Doyle, and their arguments about spiritualism and the paranormal. From there I stumbled onto the practice of EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). As a young person with an obsessive relationship to sound and access to a reel-to-reel tape recorder, this seemed to give my life a purpose: to find and record “invisible” sounds and otherwise unheard voices. These four works for performers and interactive electronics are a remembrance of that period in my life, each a meditation on loss, grief, and memory.
Traces: Sarah is a meditation on loss, grief, and memory. It is a search for what remains in the absence of known things, real things, loved things. It began as an incantation to give voice to the inaudible and form to the imperceptible. It has become a trace, a remnant, that seems to be evolving into a requiem for things lost. Traces: Sarah was commissioned by and is dedicated to Melissa Achten.