samantha kochis - tree scores: Eastern_White_Pine (2023)

[eastern white pine tree trunk, traced onto paper with charcoal]

(( potential afterlives of the tree animated into living form ))

06/17/2023 lake dunmore, vt

below is my performance of this stunning score shared with me by dear collaborator samantha kochis during our residency at new music on the point. i was curious about my instrument’s relationship to its previous life as maple and spruce, recontextualized now with steel and tungsten strings. most of the sound created here is focused on what sounds the instrument makes with the bow alone—shaped, stretched, rattled, and muted by the placement of additional metal objects. this is a work of collaboration and curiosity between samantha and i, but also between us and the location we inhabited briefly, which is sustained sonically by my interpretation of this score, but also by the pattering rain that punctuates this recording.