music

see also Often video soundtrack

SCORE

PROGRAM NOTE
Often was written in 2003 for Boston Musica Viva and the Boston Cyberarts Festival. The commission was for a large video projection by Jessie Shefrin accompanied by my music, which consists of both an electronic soundtrack and a live ensemble of six players. The video is made up from television footage of the first night of US and allied bombing of Baghdad, but slowed down and an enlarged enormously. A violet and lavender sky, full of cloudy swirls resulting from the distortion of the TV image, is lit up by slowly blossoming white lights–quite beautiful, but of course, also quite terrible.

The second half of the video consists of fantastically rapid cuts and edits to footage of American soldiers passing out bottled water to Iraqi civilians—we see only their hands. The video, ensemble, and soundtrack each rock between relentless rapid event, both manmade and natural—source sounds include cicadas, cats yowling, and flocks of seabirds—and an elegiac, pastoral atmosphere. These juxtapositions don't necessarily coincide in the soundtrack, video, and ensemble, but it is this dialogue between them that underpins the piece as whole as well as its component parts.