when anxious: (2022)
for solo multi-percussion
Commissioned and premiered by Lucas Sem on April 24, 2022.
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program note:
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Writing music has become a way for me to examine, explore, express, and understand emotional spaces that I find difficult to process and communicate. In my recent music, I have been exploring the recurring concept of anxiety and its antidote, the act of searching for calm. Writing about these concepts has helped me process living in this time, understand my emotional responses, and feel connected and grounded.
I noticed myself mostly writing in a way that depicts anxiety or provokes it in the ear of the listener. ‘What am I trying to do with this piece?’ became a lingering question. Was it enough to simply depict anxiety? Why did I feel the need to depict anxiety? Was writing this music, as I was processing my own experience, only creating more anxious feelings in myself, my performer, and my audience? Was there a more helpful way to examine these concepts?
I decided to write a piece centered on the performer’s experience and emotions. The piece would be there for a performer to play when they were feeling anxious and would help them work through that moment of anxiety and into a space of feeling grounded and calm.
There’s something visceral about percussion – hitting things with intensity – that embodies the physical experience of anxiety, panic, or intense anger. The idea of the first half of the piece is to externalize the already-present anxious thoughts. Externalizing these emotions in the piece is a musical representation of what talking about our emotions does. By bringing them out of the internal, spiraling chaos and into the real world, they become easier to put into perspective and sort through.
When anxious, running my hands under cold water gives me a physical sensation to focus on, snapping me out of the spiral and giving me something concrete. Similarly, focusing on the breath or the ground beneath my feet helps to guide me out of moments of panic. The piece does this through the sonification of the breath (using ‘shh’ or humming), rubbing brushes across the surface of the bass drum, and slowing down to focus on the subtle nuances and textures of each note in the vibraphone.
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Contact Erika for score inquiries.
