Pentecost

fixed-media electronics

Over the last several years, I have worked to simplify my music as much as possible–at first from a desire to avoid cluttering it up with “extra notes,” and increasingly out of an impulse to get down to the most basic, essential idea I can. Pentecost is one manifestation of that drive. Its genesis lies in the contemplation of a handmade tapestry I own, a deep blue field divided by two interlocking grids of white lines. My first quick sketches–wavering pencil on blank paper–tried to take in too much; but, as I pared it down, I came to a band of interweaving lines moving across the page, individual and yet one gesture.

The title Pentecost refers to both the event and the feast in Christian tradition: the descent of tongues of flame onto the heads of a waiting, wondering band of disciples. The weaving lines of my sketches circle and descend, a moment suspended in time, imagined in sound.