Sands of Time

An Electroacoustic Collage

2000

 At the time I composed this electronic piece, while a graduate student at the Longy School of Music, I was aware of the pressure of time on two levels. First, there was the immediate pressure of needing time to construct a piece for "performance" in a class recital with only three weeks allotted. This time was "compressed" by the fact that the one and only computer in the Electronic Music Studio had to be shared with five other students. The other was the awareness, (having just seen another birthday fly by), that time meant something different for me than it did for most of the other students.

Utilizing sound material at hand, I composed a piece which wove four voices into a collage. The voices are: the door of the electronic music studio opening and closing, the clock from my dormitory room, sand from New Hampshire, and my own voice. You will hear seven different voicings of the word time, as used colloquially in a variety of phrases, ending with literal closure, followed by silence.

This composition was selected, by audition, for inclusion in the Dartmouth College Electroacoustic Music Festival, August 2003.