Mirror Stratum [2011]

contrabass clarinet & cello [14’]

commissioned by the ELISION Ensemble

4/29/2014 - Ensemble PRAESENZMezinarodni Festival Soudobe Hudby. Olomouc, Czech Republic.

3/17/2014 - ELISIONMelbourne Conservatorium. Melbourne, Australia

1/21/2014 - Ensemble PRAESENZ. Frankfurter Gesellschaft Für Neue Musik [FGNM]. Instituto Cervantes. Frankfurt, Germany.

11/22/2011 - ELISION. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. England

10/24/2011 - Lecture with ELISION. Universität der Künste. Berlin, Germany

10/23/2011 - ELISION. Villa Elisabeth. Berlin, Germany

10/22/2011 - ELISION. TRANSIT Festival. Leuven, Belgium

performance history

12/8/2020 - ensemble hand werk. online event. Cologne, Germany.

7/30/2017 - Madison Greenstone & TJ Borden. Blankspace. New York, NY.

7/25/2017 - Madison Greenstone & TJ Borden. Soundspace. Rochester, NY.

11/11/2016 - Ensemble PRAESENZNUMU. Baden, Switzerland.

4/7/2016 - Madison Greenstone & TJ Borden. UCSD. San Diego.

6/11/2015 - Ensemble PraesenzGalerie Schmidt&Handrup. Berlin, Germany.

6/10/2015 - Ensemble PraesenzGalerie Schmidt&Handrup. Cologne, Germany.


video

 

program notes

"Timelessness is found in the lapsed moments of perception, in the common pause that breaks apart into a sandstorm of pauses."

"A memory of reflections becomes an absence of absences."

-Robert Smithson, Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan [1969]

Mirror Stratum takes as its reference point the mirror-based work of Robert Smithson. Smithson uses mirrors to explore concepts of space, time, perception and, above all, memory. For him, they are pockets of de-temporalized space. That mirrors reflect an object is incidental; what is important is that they deflect an object from its fixity in space and its course in time. The instruments in my piece act as Smithsonian mirrors of one another, deflecting each other's orientations in space and time. They are living, morphing, fracturing, many-paneled mirrors facing each other, refracting their own absence of identity. The listener is a third mirror, deflecting and distorting the piece through their perception of it, further altering it in their memories. If all we hear are deflected reflections of sound-objects, how do we remember past those reflections?