“to you, or in spite of ” (2023)
for solo violin & electronics
Premiered by the composer on October 27, 2023.
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Our experiences affect us. Our emotional relationship to memories changes over time: as years pass, we retain marks of past hurt, healed over but forever changed. Creating this piece was motivated out of an unresolved fixation on a particularly traumatic memory and relationship. I’ve struggled with how to frame a piece like this. How should I navigate the intense vulnerability, rawness, and variability of my emotional relationship to the subject matter?
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The result in its current form juxtaposes my emotional state towards these memories in the past and the present. Recordings capture an expression of my emotions from a specific moment in time, a moment in the past. Electronics processes manipulate these recordings – reorganizing and fracturing the sounds, allowing organic snippets to emerge, and embracing the variability and unpredictability of my emotional relationship to the past. Guided improvisation in real-time reflects and responds, contextualized by my current feeling toward these memories.
This piece is a letter: to and from a past and current self; to, or in spite of, you who caused me harm.
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Contact Erika for score inquiries.
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