Hardy shrubs bloom death perennial
— grey rosettes for hard-fought rootwork.
The way that green goes silver with the sun,
stone stays stubborn stone.
What if this burl washed smooth against the beach
could sprout the scent of jasmine,
thin the afternoon sweat of hot pine,
scoop up the wake and divide it, thumb by foaming thumb,
to sweeten the bleached horrors that circle through the garden?
I have just arrived at the Fondazione Orfeo in Positano, Italy, for a
four-week residency where I will be working on music for ensemble mosaik
to be premiered in September. If I can stop staring at the sea, I might
actually get round to doing some work.
Since 2017, in partnership with the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung,
ensemble mosaik has been offering composers the opportunity to spend a month
working on their music at the Wilhelm Kempff Kulturstiftung’s
Casa Orfeo in Positano, Italy, and to collaborate with the ensemble’s musicians,
with the results presented in an autumn concert in Berlin.
mosaik have worked flat out throughout these
difficult months to keep performing safely wherever possible, so against the
odds they were able to give their 2020 Progetto Positano concert in October,
featuring music by Wojtek Blecharz and Sara Glojnarić. It was a
magical concert — a magic only partly attributable to it being the first
concert I had attended in six months — beautifully balancing the two composers’
very different musical worlds, making full use of the spatial opportunities
offered by the St. Elisabeth-Kirche, and framing each piece with
electronics and video to draw my attention fluidly through the whole experience.
To give a flavour, here is Sara Glojnarić’s phenomenal #popfem 2, which cuts
footage from the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas
with the same rapid-fire energy that her music displays, simultaneously
deploying the archive material as a means to bear witness and subverting it
to make her own forceful point.
It will be a challenge contributing to a concert as well put together as
October’s, but I look forward to attempting to do so and sharing this
platform with fellow composer Liisa Hirsch and all of ensemble mosaik’s
musicians.