8 Scattered Thoughts – Experiments in Failure (2022) – for Tuba, Baritone Saxophone, Marimba, Piano and Electronics Processing

Movements:
1. Invitation from a Flower
2. Mad Dash
3. ♔♕Σ€€€ robbers of life $$$Σ♕♔
4. Frustrated Funk
5. Peach, Plum, Pear, and Damson

premiered @ UVA Graduate Composers Concert, 30 April 2022

composed for: the The Tokyo Gen’on Project / No Collective: Sumihisa Arima, electronics; Masanori Oishi, saxophones; Yoshiko Kanda, percussion; Aki Kuroda, piano; Shinya Hashimoto, tuba

notes:
Failure is often seen as best avoided. Yet not all failures are undesirable; some reveal cracks in harmful systems—structures of racism and dehumanization that work exactly as intended. Others open space for change: beliefs we’ve outgrown, ways of living that no longer serve us.

These ideas were on my mind when I moved to Charlottesville—a place unlike my previous home, with its own complex history and sense of place. They became woven into my daily reflections and musical explorations.

Each movement explores ‘failure’ by embracing the aesthetic of imperfect or deliberately unstable implementations of distinct compositional techniques. Invitation from a Flower explores spectralism; Frustrated Funk arranges Adapta’s acid house track “Drapse Harmonic”; Mad Dash explores a pseudo-serial framework; ♔♕Σ€€€ robbers of life $$$Σ♕♔ sonifies the transatlantic slave trade; and Peach, Plum, Pear, and Damson implements live granular processing.

Written during the COVID-19 pandemic, the video version mirrors Zoom’s grid—fractured, mediated, and strangely intimate.

score:
Eight-Scattered-Thoughts-SCORE