duration c.12:15
This piece is either for fixed media or for cello, live electronics, and fixed media.
How does it start the sea has endless beginnings
Like the Sea Itself is a musical meditation on the elemental nature of the sea and is a free improvisation on the cello performed live alongside a fixed media part, or solely a fixed media composition.
The work flows from a collaboration of play and curiosity with New York cellist Madeleine Shapiro, and is influenced by Alice Oswald’s poetry on the nature and power of water. As Oswald writes, ‘how does it start the sea has endless beginnings’, and her Sea Poem begins, “What is water in the eyes of water” and continues, “loose inquisitive fragile anxious”.
The fixed media composition was composed over the autumn of 2024 and is composed of two elements: recordings the composer made of the North Sea on the Suffolk coast, and recordings of Shapiro improvising to these sea recordings in her apartment in Manhattan, NY. The fixed media is shaped and assembled on the energy and turbulence of both the cello recordings and the sea itself. The predominant digital tool in the composition process was the Kyma APU.
First performance June, 10th 2025 at ICMC 2025 Boston, cellist Olivia Katz
Second Performance, June 2025, NYCEMF 2025 New York, cellist Madeleine Shapiro