“mercurial” (2023)
for saxophone quartet
Premiered by ~Nois saxophone quartet, Allen Recital Hall at DePaul University, May 10, 2023.
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Performed by ~Nois saxophone quartet at Constellation Chicago, July 16, 2023.
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In this piece, I am exploring the ways in which memory is altered by experiences of trauma, and the related fluid and spectral matrices of fragility.
The way that trauma memory is cataloged differs from regular memory. The memory of an entire day can become a wash of numbness, with details blending together and obscuring. A linear narrative becomes untraceable, with images and moments fragmented, scattered, and impossible to map onto a cohesive whole. Nuances are blurred, sensations are disembodied, and recollection of specificity is lost in ambiguity and dissociation.
Trauma memory can also be cataloged as flashes. In these memories, the full vividness of a micro-moment is re-experienced with a high saturation of sensory details and piercing emotion. These memory-fragments resurface and are re-experienced as a split-second image, a shock of electric current coursing through the body, illuminating every tiny detail of that fraction of a second.
In my experience, memory that has been and is being cataloged in this way leads to a fragile existence in multiple dimensions. Stasis is dissolved, and snippets of sensory input can lead to sudden and unexpected shifts of states of being. One exists within a physical fragility: stability, constancy, and safety are transient. Interactions with memory shift in focal length, tipping between clouds of numbness and fragmented vividness.
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Contact Erika for score inquiries.
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