Bird Mansion - String Quartet and Electronics

Duration: 7.5 - 8 Minutes

Written: February 2019

Premiere: Nov 26, 2019, JACK Quartet

“The Bird Mansion” was the nickname for my apartment in Tiverton, Rhode Island; a pondside dance hall that was cut up and renovated in the 1970’s. It got its name from the alarmingly large amount of birds always singing throughout the surrounding woods. The apartment was a fantastic creative space, and it felt like you could create a new universe in there.

When it came time to start my master’s studies in New York, I knew I would miss the apartment’s quirks, creaks, and silences that underscored my interactions with my students, ensembles, and my writing. I wanted to preserve it in something that would keep, like a composition.

I recorded early morning and mid-afternoon from the front porch, my morning coffee ritual, the hum of appliances, and the key thuds of my Yamaha YPG-535. The retrograde of compositions I wrote for my students, warped samples of ensembles I sing in, and even my playing through this very piece are embedded in the track. This piece is a celebration of the chorale, a celebration of process, and of the chance surroundings of spaces we inhabit, that inevitably drift from our immediate memory as time passes.