Observing the Contours of Breathing

About

In Justin Firefly Clarke’s ‘Observing the Contours of Breathing’ the music is, writes the composer, “designed to embrace and explore unstable sonorities via the extended performance techniques of the electric guitar and the individual strings within a string quartet format. I have long been interested in the idea of irirangi, a concept of sonic instability or ‘unexpected sounds’ that exist in the voices of taonga puoro, as explored by Richard Nunns and Allan Thomas in ‘The Search for the Sound of Pūtōrino: “Me te wai e utuutu ana”’ (2005). Moreover, I’m intrigued by the potential gateways that can manifest between the acoustic realm and the amplified universe through the medium of the electric guitar. In this work, the performer’s intention and the actual sonic outcome are designed to dance upon a high-wire together. This high-wire straddles two worlds: acoustic and amplified.”