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Katherine Young
BIOMES 6.0
for 2 pianos and 2 percussionists
(2023)| Duration | 25' |
|---|---|
| Commission | Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation |
| Premiere | February 10, 2024; CompFest 2024 at Emory University Performing Arts Studio; Ecologies of Sound, Yarn/Wire |
| Technical requirements | Contact the publisher at info@eamdc.com for complete instrumentation and technical details. To obtain electronics: please forward your automated transaction receipt to info@eamdc.com. |
| Publisher | PSNY |
Program Note
BIOMES is a framework for collaboration, learning, and speculative sounding. It’s an ongoing, in-progress project. It’s a means for connecting and interacting. It’s a series of musical pieces related through their engagement with a collection of materials that continues to grow and evolve. Performers utilize the BIOMES performance materials (photographs, scientific texts, fictional texts, musical notation, sound files, videos, drawings, code, links, maps, statistics, field notes, and other materials) related to a collection of (sur)real biomes to find structure and materials for a given performance. Some of the biomes are based on actual ecosystems, while others are more fabulously constructed, but each biome has its own characteristics that dictate processes, meaning, and – most importantly – interaction strategies. Naturalistic and fantastic interpretations are welcome and can co-mingle. Within the parameters of a given biome, individual creatures or features exist with their own ways of navigating the rules of that biome. Many creatures and features exist in multiple biomes, or travel from one to another. Different biomes coexist and can be explored exclusively, simultaneously, or sequentially.
Part of this project, BIOMES 6.0 is a notated piece of concert music created for and in collaboration with piano and percussion quartet Yarn/Wire.
BIOMES 6.0 explores the following biomes:
1. Zona de Silencio – An arid, expansive, and virtually silent desert. This musical biome is inspired by the patch of desert near the Bolsón de Mapimí in Durango, Mexico, on Tepehuán lands. According to contemporary legend, radio and other communication signals cannot be received.
2. Wetlands – A diverse category that includes many different types of transitional ecosystems (swamps, marshes, bogs, vernal pools, etc.).
3. Oyster Reef – Coastal infrastructures supported by oysters like Crassostrea virginica.
4. Human Microbiome – The 10-100 trillion symbiotic mircrobial cells harbored by each person.
5. Chattahoochee and Ocmulgee River Watersheds – The urban, suburban, and rural lands that feed the Chattahoochee River (and eventually the Gulf of Mexico) and the Ocmulgee River (and eventually the Atlantic Ocean). These rivers run through the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee/Creek and Cherokee Peoples.
Every day, I live and work on the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee/Creek and Cherokee Peoples. Recordings for this piece were also made on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Lenape, Canarsee, and Munsee Peoples; and the Peoria, Bodwéwadmi, Kaskaskia, Kiikaapoi, Myaamia, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Peoples.
Yarn/Wire and I developed BIOMES 6.0 over a multi-year collaborative process that involved workshops, recording, transcription, creating outdoor performances and fixed media installations. This piece was made possible by a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation.
– Katherine Young
