fascia (2019)

for B-flat clarinet, objects, and electronics

This work situates variable elements within a fixed environment: the clarinet assumes a shapeshifting form, breathing life into the monolithic rigidity of the electronics.

Borrowing heavily from improvisations by clarinetist and improviser, Juliette Adam, the live-performed clarinet part permits an elasticity that welcomes risk, suspense, and uncertainty. The electronic counterpart recalls malfunction and inhabits a dark, science-fiction-inspired ambience invoked by sub-bass frequencies and heavily processed recordings of machines, mechanisms, and manufactured materials.

Uncertainty proliferates with each musical unfolding, as the clarinet is subsumed under a chorus of insistent, subterranean rumblings and mechanical stridulations intoned by a network of non-musical objects, consumer electronics, and modified instruments.

Performed by Juliette Adam at Le Centquatre-Paris on 18 June 2019.

Presented at Festival ManiFeste hosted by the Institute of Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM).