Tag Archives: cello

This is Water!

This is Water!, for en­semble and tape, takes its name from the book of the same title by David Foster Wallace, sub­titled ‘Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life’ (Little, Brown & co., New York, 2009). Here is the pas­sage, which gives that book its name: There are these two young […]

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…going back to the skies

Some words that I had nearby while writing this piece (cour­tesy of Roger Deakin, C.D. Wright, Seamus Heaney and Friedrich Dürrenmatt): Daydreaming has been my making and my un­doing — like having a light at your back you can’t see but can still feel. ‘Since when,’ he asked, ‘Are the first and last line of any […]

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Mikrokonzert: I Swear I Saw the Sun Falling

For a while now, I have been in­ter­ested in the edges of things: where things start and stop being, where they vanish, where one idea bleeds into an­other. This piece at­tempts to com­bine found sounds and streams of ‘noise’ that we carry with us in the back­ground of our lives  —  ra­dios, pop music, con­ver­sa­tions, re­membered places  —  only […]

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Intensifications

Partly an ex­per­i­ment in tex­tural and nota­tional pos­sib­il­ities, Intensifications, for 2 vi­olas and cello, is in three short move­ments. Over the course of the work we move through a spec­trum of pitched to un­pitched sounds and back again, pushing the in­stru­ments’ sonic pos­sib­il­ities to the edges of aud­ib­ility and con­ven­tional tech­nique. Each move­ment is governed […]

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Detached Thought #100

The Night is also a re­li­gious con­cern  –  and even more so  –  when I viewed the Moon and Stars through Herschell’s tele­scope  –  and saw that they were worlds.  –  ” — Lord Byron, from Detached Thoughts, Pisa c. October 1821. These few words, jotted down for no-one other than the au­thor him­self, seem far more tender and thoughtful than any of […]

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  • Microbiography

    Chris Swithinbank is a British-Dutch com­poser who works with both acoustic in­stru­ments and elec­tronic sounds. He is cur­rently a stu­dent at Harvard University with Chaya Czernowin.
    Full Biography »

  • Hear