Everything That Rises

Composers note: I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how I might be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places - a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings. Over the next few years, two more quartets followed. The second quartet, untouched, is a further exploration of the aeolian sound world of the first. Then, in Canticles of the Sky, the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of their instruments. And now comes Everything That Rises. This fourth quartet is more expansive, both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World - a performance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds. Everything That Rises traverses this same territory, but in a much more melodic way. Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats. Over the course of an hour, the lines spin out - always rising - in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing.