Wandering Worlds

Wandering Worlds centers on a tumultuous dance that struggles to assert itself while being transformed, tossed around from instrument to instrument, and repeatedly stopped in its tracks. The work plays with conceptions of perceptual time, stretching melodies out into sustained textures meant to mimic digital speed changes, and compressing those same melodies into fast gestural effects. Each different speed change radically alters how we perceive the nature of these musical characters – as melody, harmony, or texture. The players also find themselves representing musical characters of their own – constantly snatching gestures from each other and imitating them, or aggressively interrupting each other, or having dialogues while others go off and do something completely different. This interplay both serves to halt the music’s progress as well as start it back up again, eventually dissolving the entire dance into an oblivion of rapid, random gestures.