Ice Becomes Water, String Quartet & Electronics @ TechnoSonics

As glaciers melt at increasing rates, they raise sea levels, change currents and affect our entire web of ecosystems. This piece is a lament for our role in this process and a call to change. The source for the electronics came from underwater field recordings shared by glaciologist Oskar Glowaki. I transformed extracted samples with a continuum ranging from shards of the original sounds to radically transformed timbres, while keeping some recognizable. The former include the thin stratsopheric sounds of the opening while the later include low groans of breaking ice. The string sounds were based on experiments with my colleagues David Sariti (vln.), Ayn Balija (vla.) and Pete Spaar (cb.). I moved back and forth between the acoustic and digital worlds, listening intently to the newly created web. The original string orchestra version was commissioned by Barbara Day Turner and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. The string quartet version was created for the 2024 New Music at the Point.