25 Jun WHO IS CALLING? (2022) for string quartet & audio track
For Kronos Quartet. Premiered by Kronos Quartet at Breadloaf during their 2022-2023 season.
WHO IS CALLING?: String Quartet No. 7 (2022) for string quartet and audio file
score and parts available.
PROGRAM NOTE
Who is Calling? for string quartet and audio track (2022) was composed alongside a field recording of frogs, in particular, the pseudacris crucifer, also known as spring peepers, chorus frogs, or small tree frogs—recorded on the traditional, unceded home of the Western Abenaki People, in a marsh in Ripton, Vermont. The recording was made during the first spring of the Covid Pandemic.
The planet had become quiet in a way it had not been since before the advent of modern movement and the vibrations they create that keep non human animals away. Going out into the marsh to listen to frogs calling during an anthropause, I was struck by this auditory starfield of life, feeling as though I was on another planet, encapsulated by it, there with it, with my presence not altering it. If light could transfer into sound, in a new sonoluminescence, it could feel little bit like frogs calling in the spring. We are, after all, here with all living creatures—sentient beings—they are not here for us. Animals are here with us.
In that calling there is also a reflection of our own selves listening inward to the interconnectedness, the calling from within—not only listening to our own deep, true nature, but to the reciprocal calling, getting to feel how our own actions in our world are impacting others.
Sentient beings, like these frogs, are still here despite us. Anthropause aside, the planet is still suffering as a result of human’s impact on climate change. The oceans are still toxic and depleted, factory farms have taken over, exploiting both sentient animals and migrant workers to do the brutal, traumatizing tasks in slaughterhouses that others will not, and climate change is out of control as a result of human animals’ actions and belief systems. Will we stop destroying lives and landscapes and start doing things differently? Who is calling? Are we listening?