Quiet Songs (Studio/Stage: Entangling private and public creative spaces through interdisciplinary composition - Portfolio)

for solo performer (viola and voice) and video (2019), c. 10 minutesQuiet Songs was commissioned by Aldeburgh Festival for Bastard Assignments’ performance at the 2019 Festival. Written for me to perform, it sets live detuned viola against a video part compiled from documentation of the piece’s creation (captured in the private environment of my studio), manipulated and periodically silenced. Starting with a simple mirrored relationship between the two (the viola provides the sound for the silenced vocal performance onscreen), they quickly take different paths, coinciding here and there throughout the piece.The live viola part uses few traditional playing techniques. I use scordatura (the strings are retuned to F-E-A-G), a wide range of playing positions (near, on and behind the bridge all the way to the fine-tuners, and over the fingerboard all the way down to the scroll), creating white noise by bowing the body of the instrument, and noise effects. The live vocal part takes sounds from the video and adapts them to the public environment of the concert platform.The audio in the video part uses recordings made in my studio – most notably via a contact microphone positioned on the window. This recording documents my performance in the ‘portrait’ material, simultaneously capturing the sound of my performance in the studio and the sounds of the street outside.Performance video, score demonstration excerpts and screenshots which have been annotated in the score © 2019 Thom VerdeniusPerformed by Caitlin Rowley at City Lit Theatre, London, 11 October 2019