Ap(he)art

the setting:

This piece for violin + cello was written for Josh Modney (violin) and Michael Nicolas (cello) of International Contemporary Ensemble, with each part recorded separately in quarantine in May 2020 at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It was my first “COVID piece”.

the story:

Ap(he)art - the word "heart" is naturally embedded within the word "apart" when we say it - is a sonic reflection on the uniquely personal yet “commonplace” human experiences of brokenness...the cycle of our hearts breaking, pulling apart, and coming back together. Multiple identities are generated from the dimension of the players' voices whispering excerpts of text I chose from "a beautiful composition of broken" by r.h. Sin.

There are various layers of “pulling apart the heart” - and mending it - activated throughout the piece, whether it be through time stamps, fluctuations in dynamics, overpressure dialogue based on my mapping of the phonetics, conversations between the phonetic nature of the words and the meaning of the words themselves, etc. The piece is improvisatory in expression yet restricted in time; the players build the material in each movement to then be cut off and move forward, as life often forces us to do.