Pre/postlude: Free Flow (2024)

Program Note

        Pre/postlude: Free Flow was conceived of as both a prelude and a postlude to Dammed, a larger work-in-progress that explores the impact of dams in Colorado. The piece is a bubbling, surging multimedia soundscape created using field recordings and videos that I took at the Yampa River, which runs through northwestern Colorado and is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the United States. It also features electronically transformed snippets of acoustic music performed by bassoonist Madison Triplett. For the live performance, audience members were invited to lie on the floor at the front of the theater.

 

        This piece is an homage to the beauty and power of undammed rivers and the crucial role that they play in sustaining ecosystems, and a hope for what the thousands of rivers in this country that have been needlessly choked can return to.