here without trying

Mvt 1 : “Here.” | Mvt 2 : “Halation Sketches” | Mvt 3 : “The Breath Becomes the Bow”

Piece Information

Instrumentation: string quartet

Duration: ~ 14 minutes

Date: © 2021

Commissioned by:

The Juilliard School in fulfillment of the 2020 Gena Raps Prize

I found this such a fascinating concept and one that could be a beautiful exploration in music. This piece is a series of these moments, of varying length, depth, and intensity, where a tangential thought is noticed and we ease back into quiet.

Where the first movement explores the stillness of meditation, the second and third follow a mind that does not want to quiet down. The textures are agitated explorations of the sounds strings can make beyond the typical use of the bow and fingers. When this texture breaks, we hear a new kind of meditative sound, combining the voices of the players with the sounds of their instruments.

Program note:

This music is a meditation, or at least an attempt to represent one. With any attempt to quiet the mind, there are constant distractions and thoughts that lead us away from the place of quiet. This always frustrated me whenever I would try these sorts of practices. But then one day someone told me that the quiet moments are not the point and the distraction is in fact necessary. It is the moment of returning from meandering thought to stillness, not the stillness itself, that can be most rewarding in meditative practice.

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