‘Between the Silences’ is one of my pieces where almost nothing happens. Instead, it is a string of reminiscences and recollections that refer back to its first utterance, itself only a cascade of similar actions referring backwards to some unrealized moment of unison. Beginning, and then, after doing very little more than meandering around for thirty minutes, it dries up and disappears. Its nine string instruments (three violins, two violas, two cellos, two double basses) and nine loudspeakers are reflections of a single starting frequency, unfolded downwards and sideways over time. Their intersecting orbits create melodies without melody, strange non-chords that are only ever partials of a ghostly blur from moment to moment. Unexpected fragile duets, trios, quartets and more emerge, defined negatively by the absence of the greater ensemble. Like the washing machines I remember from high school, whose presence one notices only when it stops, these voices have identities so weak we fail to discern when they leave, but when they return we can remember them once again.
‘Between the Silences’, 2008