THREADS OF INSOMNIA (2021)
For percussion (prepared guitar, timpani), prepared piano, viola, cello, and electronics (tape).
Commissioned by Tura New Music for the Summers Night Project.
Premiered 23rd March, 2022, by Decibel Ensemble, Clocked Out, and Soundstream at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Recorded 21st March, 2022, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Full duration: 9 minutes.
Created in the pandemic era, Threads of Insomnia is a reflection on distortion of the passage of time. It rejects the temporal linearity of the musical stave, casting the performer adrift in time as in sleepless hours of the night. This work is a graphic score, read in the Decibel ScorePlayer.
The score is also a response to the late prints and sketches of visual artist Louise Bourgeois (Hours of the Day, La Rivière Gentille), in which she muses on the passage of time as an old woman. Bourgeois was drawn to the visual rhythm, reliability, and temporal regularly of the musical stave, and used it often as a canvas for her works.
