Bring Something Incomprehensible Into This World

The text is from the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in reference to Heinrich Von Kleist and to the idea that misspeaking in itself can be generative. I think of the title as a very affirmative statement of what I personally think the goal of art should be: rendering something into existence that is inconceivable before it happens.  In Bring Something Incomprehensible into This World the trumpet and voice are in a playful dialogue. The text is presented in fragments. The fragments are made of single words or just syllabic sounds. I found breaking the text up into smaller sounding parts allowed me greater flexibility when writing the piece and ultimately allowed for a more free-spirited approach. The arrangement of the vocal sounds sometimes imply new words and phrases. Often the trumpet and the voice blend together to create what I call a “dirty unison”. I imagined the sounds of the words themselves being “smeared” by the trumpet’s sounds. I think the interaction between the voice and the trumpet implies a kind of hybrid instrument or a mutant offspring that is the combination of the trumpet and the human voice.

The work is recorded on Soft Aberration released on New Focus Recordings (2017).

Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti’s program note.

Commissioned by Andy Kozar and Corrine Byrne.