From a house in Texas, a house in Michigan, and an old house in Paris . . .

to my house and your house.



Stephanie Bork lives in Texas and Christine Beamer lives in Michigan. They used Zoom to record this piece that I wrote as an experiment in communicating musically through remote video. What I particularly love about this video is that it is a real-time performance and not an assembling of parts. Stephanie and Christine make eye contact with one another in the same way that they would make eye contact if they were in the same room.

They watch one another's bows, welcome the periods of cacophony that result from the lags that happen with Zoom (a little random cacaphony is written into the music to illustrate the text), and they are surprised at the moments when things are suddenly perfectly synchronized.

They both have the words of the story going through their heads as they are playing, adding a third shared "voice" to the music making. If the words resonate in your head as well, then there is yet another voice added to the remote "chorus."

This time of pandemic is difficult for everyone, and we all have to be creative in the ways we compensate for not being able to do the things we do that require sharing space. Musicians, actors, and dancers have to try to cope in different ways from people who do not play, sing, act, or dance. From an early age social interaction often meant playing, singing, acting, and dancing with our friends. It is through those activities that they (we) found friends as young people, and it is the way we find friends as adults. For some of us, it is the way we make our living.

Writing music that can be used to connect people musically over physical distance has been one of the activities that has preserved my sanity over this frightening time. Usually it is the writing itself that keeps the despair away--the way that sounds, words, pitches, rhythms, and textures interact with one another in horizontal and vertical ways, but the chance to make new musical friends through writing, and being able to see and hear people I have never met in person interact with one another musically through the pitches and rhythms that I have assembled, and an unvoiced text that resonates loudly in the head along with the music, brings real joy. Thank you Stephanie. Thank you Christine.

You can find links to the music, which I have arranged for many combinations of instruments, on this page of my Thematic Catalog Blog.