for DIY instruments, electronics & movement; Commissioned by MATA Festival 2018 for Ensemble Contemporaneous
The quote “Let them stop swaying; then there won’t be any wind” comes from a Soviet children’s story, The Little Sparrow. Alongside the story’s heavy-handed moralistic plot, there’s a beautiful narrative of a baby sparrow mis-perceiving the world around him. He’s confused about humans and assumes a cat has eaten off all of their feathers and torn off their wings, for example. And he believes the swaying trees cause the gusts of wind that nearly blow him out of his nest. He understands that his body is affected by the wind, but can’t process the idea that other bodies (in this case the bodies of the trees) are not the cause of it, which is the message I take with me.
In Let them stop swaying; then there won’t be any wind, cause and origin are often obscured. Performers are asked to respond to minute changes in the sound of air as effected by their own bodies and the bodies of others. The sound source and the consequences of movement are augmented and diminished throughout by way of live mixing, recorded or performed doubling and abstraction, and imitation.