Secret Machine no. 7 was completed after a series of workshops with violinist Miranda Cuckson over a two-year period. The piece uses a metal mute and has a scordatura, tuning the violin’s G string down to an E. The mute allows for the violin to emerge and fade into nothing. Much of the music was conjured by dreaming, and it gave me the feeling I was channeling something telegraphed in from the outside. The material is organized in an ever-expanding, wave-like song form, and correlated to a wave-like expansion of the violin’s range. The piece’s hyper-virtuosity generates an unusual, cool glow of resonance. While writing, I often imagined Miranda performing the music while hovering over a blue-glowing portal, with the sounds of her violin communicating in a secret
cosmological language to activate it. I would write down the dream-music in the early morning with a muted violin in my lap. Mapping my hand’s way around the violin, I tried to weave a soulful, melodic line expanding and contracting into a labyrinth of brilliant harmonics and resonance. Seeing how Miranda danced through the music over our various workshops also guided my decisions.
Secret Machine no. 7
solo violin (2023)ca.18”