Shōrin-zu (Pine Trees)

For video, clarinet, and tape. Commissioned by clarinetist Germaine Sijstermans. 

Performance Video:

Early Video demo (with guitar instead of clarinet):
 

Program Notes: 
Shōrin-zu (Pine Trees) is inspired by the pair of silk screen paintings of the same name by Hasegawa Tohaku. Germaine and I are both interested in Japanese aesthetics—the idea of Yugen, or the feeling of something that’s unattainable, and the idea of Ma, or empty space. Hasegawa’s Pine Trees exemplifies both of these traits.

My goal in this work is to explore the ‘edges’, the transitions from objects to emptiness of Hasegawa’s Pine Trees in each element of the piece—the clarinet’s niente approach to each dyad, the field recording and wavering image in the video, the crescendi and dimenuendi in the tape part. The overall result in live performance is a kind of viewing of Hasegawa’s Pine Trees through my artistic imagination.