Lejano-Cercano

Performed at Mills College in Oakland, California on December 2017.

Lejano—Cercano was composed in the fall of 2017. It stems from a graphic score I titled “Sonotropes”, comprised of a constellation of geometric shapes which served as the basis of the work. They were paired with musical instruments that seemed to have some synesthetic relation with them. At the outset of my imagination for this piece was an interest in the relationship between sound and movement. As heliotropes, flowers that move in relation to the shining sun, I wondered how this relationship could be expressive of a movement predicated on hearing. This idea also echoed a broader interest in the nature of displacement and migration, two forms of movement that define our contemporary moment. These shapes were mapped within a grid. The vertical axis assigned pitches, the horizontal axis suggested temporal positions. The resulting image suggested a form where constant growth and decay intermingle, and this motif is expressed in the piece as sounds swell and decline, initially sounding far off, becoming more prevalent with passing time. Gradually, the global structure becomes denser, reaching an apex of continual tension by the middle of the piece. What then follows is the opposite process, a constant release that culminates with stasis.