Honorifics

Inspired by the success of Theseus Verbatim, I wanted to write another piece with compiled text for my own voice plus one other instrumentalist. The combination of voice and percussion was especially exciting because the percussionist’s approach to timbre has interesting overlaps with the singer’s detail work of manipulating parts of text and speech.

The idea of using a list of honorifics came after a series of ego-bruising audition failures. That prompted me to meditate more on my own occasional fixations on titles or status to feel validation, and the idea of repeating and deconstructing text to a point of meaninglessness seemed freeing.

Special thanks to the Walden School and Talujon for commissioning and performing the piece, as well as to Olivia Marckx, Aidan Gold, Reid Bruton, Dashon Burton, and Ted Hearne for their guidance at various stages of the process.

There was a percussion mishap with the bow placement earlier in the concert program which made it unexpectedly unavailable for the performance of this piece.