A battered soldier. Years spent voyaging in search of home.

 

Mountain wolves and lions. Royal Servants under an all-encompassing spell.

 

The Goddess Cierce. Queen of The House. Powerful Enchantress.

 

At The Water’s Edge, explores tension encountered when things that seem too good to be true, turn out to not only be a mirage, but are in fact the orchestration of ‘a beautiful predator’ (Goldfinch).

 

Taking inspiration from ‘The Book of Witches’ (Homer, The Odyssey) and the design work of associate artist Hahnie Goldfinch, my composition focuses on the realization of this fable in a dramatic context. I attempt to give shape to what the world of Circe’s palace might sound like, a space I envisioned as opulent and inviting, yet at the same time stark and dangerous. Throughout the crafting process I drew heavily on the vocabulary of Emily Wilson’s fresh translation of the source text (2018) to devise creative approaches to the composition and orchestration of new sonic material for the work. For example, when the soldiers first approach, they hear ‘an intricate, enchanting piece of work. The kind a goddess fashions.’ I used this as an opportunity to explore my interest in exotic scales and the harp, an instrument whose timbre has always fascinated me. In addition, as the story progresses, and darker themes of reckoning and revenge surface, I responded with an exploration of hocking and fragmentation techniques, world music and jazz aesthetics, as well as an approach to sonic production as a means to inform the total compositional outcome.