Catalogue

From the Source

Program Note:

For better or for worse, because of all of the time spent indoors and on my devices this past year, I have become infatuated with the news and how people interpret it. I am obsessed with the New York Times podcasts ‘The Daily’ and ‘The Argument’ and consume NPR on my commutes. I go down rabbit holes of articles in ‘The Atlantic’ and observe heated Facebook debates.

One main theme from everything that has been in the news cycle this past year seems to be the emphasis on source material: Who said that? Is that true? Where is that article from? Can we trust the results of the election? Did Carol Baskin kill her husband? Did the royal family really say that about Meghan Markle’s future child? With all of this confusion and speculation, I thought it would be interesting to explore these ideas musically.

As a way of capturing all of the chatter, I decided to craft somewhat simple musical gestures that were cloudy or distorted in some way, such as breathy flute sounds, string harmonics, and tight canonic figures. I was interested in all of the little ways that details of a story are changed when retold over time. There is an inexactness, a messiness, about how we retell events which inevitably leaves out certain details. It also seems today that with every further attempt to uncover the truth, there is an equally strong force attempting to do just the opposite.