schemes that offer us a sense of futurity (2021):
for amplified soprano voice, flute, clarinet, violin, and electronics
written for TAK Ensemble
audio:
recorded at Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York City, 2021/4/25
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video:
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This piece is a sort of travelogue of the past eight months or so, if a travelogue can be made from travels within a 600-meter radius from my place. Over the course of these eight months, i have collected pictures, field recordings, fallen leaves and flowers, thoughts, drawings, and anecdotes, most of them while spending the days by myself — lately with a dog. Some of these items are now here, in this score or in the tape part that will revive their specter during performance and when people listen to the recording of the piece at home. Others served more as points of departure into imaginary travels for the interpreters and listeners of the work that will manifest sonically.
The phrase “schemes that offer us a sense of futurity” appears in the first entry of Parallel Peaks, the contribution that my friend, Danny Walden and i made to Fonema Consort’s Digital Mural, posted on January 18, 2021, accessible online here.
The piece shares with the mural its general framework as well as many of the collected items, albeit in a much more individual sense here. I owe a lot of the inspiration to Danny nonetheless and see both works as intimately tied.
Initially, things in schemes that offer us a sense of futurity were supposed to be held together conceptually by alluding to the myth of la llorona, though it would be a stretch to claim that is still the case at this point. Traces of her specter can be found everywhere, but instead of holding items together these traces bathe them in her aura, with no attempt to amalgamate. Unlike me, she’s not interested in collecting them.
The work in its current state is the travelogue of imaginary trips facilitated by all of these ideas during a time when stimuli were few and far apart, and when moving beyond 600 meters was not possible physically, but very much a necessity for the mind.
March 21, 2021
photo credit: Emiliano Zúñiga