Here is the program note for the piece:
Inspired by Greg Egan's novel Diaspora, Orphanogenesis describes the birth of a very special child. This child comes into being not as a combination of two people's genetic material, but as a spontaneous construct with only the most basic common threads coming from many sources. She is "everyone's child". Her journey begins in a morass of personalities - a beautiful cacophony of contrasting characters. Within this cloud of chaos, the child first finds a window into her own identity in the form of a touching song of ancient origins. Emerging as a singularity, she soon finds comfort wrestling with the ancient melody and through it finally finds her own voice. As this piece is clearly a beginning, its ending is pensive and introspective rather than complete.
Regarding the 'morass of personalities' at the beginning - I wanted to inject some of each performer's personality into the piece. Each player is directed to "play one of your favourite melodies", with variances per my instructions. I must say, this idea frightened me while i was formulating the idea (i thought it may just sound like a mistake), but i am really happy with the final result. As a bonus - the performers really seemed to enjoy the process.
As always, feedback is much appreciated.
joe
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Replies
I am sure this was a fun piece to play and that always makes a big difference in the result.
Very Cool!
I wonder if I was a little too timid with what I asked them to do - perhaps instead of everyone being loud, or quiet, or whatever TOGETHER, I think I could have had little sections (duets, trios, etc) pop up at times. For a quick second, some favourite tunes might be recognizable and then lost in chaos again. Maybe next time.
Ariel Ramos said:
Andrew Gleibman said:
orphanogenesis concert edition.pdf