“to you, or in spite of ” (2023)
for solo violin & electronics
Premiered by the composer on October 27, 2023.
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?
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.
Contact Erika for score inquiries.
