porcelain body [2018]

percussion [27’]

[32" timpano, cowbell, styrafoam, metal baking sheet, metal bead chains, metal wires, bass bow, superballs]

composition commissioned by ON - Neue Musik Köln e.V. The composition was made possible by the funding of the City of Cologne.

included in the evening-length concert-installation KILN

performance history

12/8/22 - Noah Rosen. Grosser Saal der Musik-Akademie Basel. Basel, Switzerland

11/23/22 - Noah Rosen. Hochschule für Musik. Basel, Switzerland

9/8/2018 - Rie Watanabe. ON - Neue Musik Köln. Cologne, Germany

program note

In ceramics, the word body designates an amount of unfired porcelain; the material in a raw, unshaped form. In this piece, all sounds are created through processes of friction - objects dragged, drawn, or vibrating against one another. This mode of sound production reveals something elemental in the instruments: it guides our focus towards the textures within sound, its granulation, its density, its physicality. Like an unfired body of porcelain, we confront these sounds as raw, unshaped, but vibrant and pluripotent material, before it is shaped and solidified within the extreme conditions of the kiln.