Performance of this work requires additional media. I’ve been utterly enamoured with Emily’s playing of the harp since the very first time I heard her. (This week will be the first time I properly meet Michelle, though I can say the same for all of her playing I’ve heard through recordings over the past year!) But, anyway, it’s been a long time I’ve known Emily. And, together, we’ve been dreaming about this piece down so many years that it’s hard to imagine it has finally taken shape.
Unusually for me, it’s been long enough that—in my mind—the piece has actually been entirely different things. A solo. A concerto. Maybe it was even an opera at some point?!
Naturally, all of these versions had a lot of different names. Most of the names I give my pieces come from poetry. This used to be abstract: My music is dense and detailed and sharply drawn, and this is much like the poetry I’m drawn to. But over recent years—maybe the permission of old age—this connection has become more literal. The eventual title that ended up entwined with this particular music comes from a poem called
Walking in the Breakdown Lane by Louise Erdrich. Early on—very early on—I asked Emily to record herself reading that poem. Then I transcribed the audio using computers, and my ears:
I show this to you not because of the ’technique’ of it—but because I started my life in music as a singer. The voice, its rhythms and idiosyncrasies, are deeply engrained in all my music making. I still sing virtually every line I write in my pieces, and the music of Emily’s reading has lived with me, on repeat, again and again, in so many ways as I composed over the last months. So, while it definitely is the two solo harps that are showcased here, it’s the text that haunts, colours, shapes, and drives this piece. It takes on every form: Percussion. Robot. Trumpet. Synth Pad. Scratch. String sounds. Vocal fry. Always something electronic, until suddenly, entirely human.
