Self-portrait as a hackberry tree - Soprano, Bass Flute, and Live Electronics

Duration: 10 Minutes

Written: Fall 2024

Text: KB Brookins

Soprano Range: (B3) C#4-B5

Premiere: Sydeboob Duo (Anna Elder & Sarah Steranka), MITU580, Brooklyn, Jan. 2024

Program Note:

I found KB's poem during a year where I sought to tackle my own "Species Loneliness." The term––first coined by Michael Vincent McGinnis and popularized by Robin Wall Kimmerer––considers the impact of wide-spread human disconnection from nature. I began writing this piece just in time for the trees to drop their leaves, actually making tree identification all the easier. Rather than looking up at a sea of green, the leaves fall to the ground near each trunk, amplifying their characteristics. This work hence became an effort to know the tree, its surroundings, and better know myself.

I wanted the vocal lines to freely convey KB's text, which blends the physical, social, and societal with such certainty. The flute's arpeggios and extended techniques imitate the tree's physical features. The live delay evokes the hackberry's bumpy bark, which often resembles the repetitive layers of a topographical map. To delineate each section of the piece, each musician slowly reveals a specific collection of pitches, as if gradually getting to know the tree and its surroundings.

This text is as much about gender variance and Blackness as it is about hackberry trees. KB tactfully paints the comparisons: Black and trans people thrive in absolutely impossible circumstances, always reborn after being targeted and cut down "with instruments not strong enough for roots." Hackberry trees are also monecious, with binary-defying male and female flowers present on each tree. (It's just biology!) Crossing the "fence" between pre and post transition, between surviving and thriving, more fully illuminates what it means to be alive.

The electronics feature environmental noise from around eight different hackberry trees. These trees grew in places I visited weekly: street trees near students' apartments, rehearsal spaces, and neighborhood walks. This list culminates with one of Brooklyn's largest hackberry trees, near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden fence on Washington Avenue, both sides of which are featured in the electronics.

"This native species is actually considered a weed tree by many gardeners. It can grow in really harsh environments, and you might find one growing out of a crack in the concrete. But this mature specimen proves what an amazing tree it can become, given the chance to thrive in the right place. [The hackberry in our Fragrance Garden] is probably about 100 years old and very likely a volunteer tree—the classic ugly duckling that grew into a swan."

- Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Technical Requirements:

1. A computer loaded with the Triggers 1-7

2. Software (Max and Ableton patches are available with purchase)
3. Stereo speakers on either side of the performers

4. An audio interface with two inputs and two outputs

5. Two microphones, one for each performer

6. Four cables connected to the audio interface, one for each microphone and stereo speaker

Optional:
7a. Max: electronics can be mapped to computer keyboard or a foot pedal

7b. Ableton: electronics are mapped to computer keyboard, though a Push / MIDI controller may be desired

8. In large spaces, a stage monitor facing the performers may be desired:
           -Run the microphone cables into a mixing board, not the audio interface
            -Run three additional cables out of the mixing board: two to the interface (for each microphone input), and one for the stage monitor. Place the monitor at the null point of each microphone