Bodies of Sound and Space

Program Note

This piece was written for Weathering Steel, the Plein Air Sound Collective's debut album of site specific music,  and recorded in May 2023 at the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely,  Colorado. The Tank is an empty steel water cistern with extraordinary  acoustic properties, including a natural decay reverb of up to forty  seconds.

Bodies of Sound and Space is a framework for understanding one's environment as a sonic collaborator and exploring the ways that physical environment and proximity can inform one's relationship with other performers. It's notated as a text score that provides performers with a set of instructions for actively listening and improvising with their surroundings. That same set of instructions is repeated in different physical configurations: in the first movement, "Close," performers stand shoulder-to-shoulder. They spread out for the second movement, "With distance." For the third movement, "Edges," they stand as far apart as possible. In the final movement, "Flow," they bring movement to the forefront of their interaction with the space.