Leaf fabric (2017)

[2222.4221.timp.+2 perc.pno.hrp.strings]
Duration: 14’

Commissioned by Georg Friedrich Hass and the Suntory Summer Arts Festival

Premiered September 7, 2017 at Suntory Hall, Japan
Tokyo Symphony Orchestra; Ilan Volkov, conductor

Leaf Fabric began when I first heard a set of recordings made by the Swiss scientist Roman Zweifel of ultrasonic acoustic emissions emitted by Scots Pine trees. These delicate popping and sputtering sounds were produced by water traveling up the tree’s xylem. To me, the recordings are a delicate and mesmerizing sonic window in the way plants uptake and circulate water, not unlike the vital breaths in and out that you or I are taking right now. I transposed and transcribed the higher frequency sounds of these recordings by ear to create a long melody. Over the first half of Leaf Fabric, this melody emerges from beneath the dense, but fragile, sputtering and popping of the orchestra, then dissipates again. The second half of Leaf Fabric is a sonic rendering of the column-like vascular tissue of plants. Both halves treat the density of Zweifel’s field recordings in different ways: the former as something delicate, the later as something powerful.

I am grateful to Georg Friedrich Haas for asking me to write this piece, and for his ceaseless mentorship and encouragement.