xStreams
for piccolo, bass flute and live electronics

Commissioned by Carin Levine and Rodrigo Cicchelli Velloso, 2015

The piece has a starting point in the project Cidade Museu, a site specific performance designed for Viseu, Portugal and exploring five derelict spaces in the city. The Cidade Museu project is based on the notion of overlaying resonance as a way of articulating identity and memory in everyday places.

xStreams represents a further stage in this overlaying process and uses recordings from Cidade Museu featuring saxophone (Franziska Schroeder), cello (Ricardo Jacinto) and piano (Pedro Rebelo). These materials determine harmonies, gestures and rhythms of xStreams. The notion of extremes (dynamics, pitch, articulation…) informs the process of overlaying; this is evident in how the original recordings are treated and how they are used to derive pitch and timbral material for the piccolo and the bass flute, two instruments at the extremes of the flute family range.

xStreams is notated using a scrolling animated graphic score which combines both conventional and unconventional music notation.