Attempt at Exhausting a Place

for flute, soprano saxophone, viola, percussion, piano, and electronics (2019)

commissioned by soundinitiative with support from the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE)

released on Slow Motion, Qubit and Ensemble Dal Niente, Carrier Records 065, 2022.

Attempt at Exhausting a Place transports the audience to Paris’s Place Saint Sulpice through field recordings recasting Georges Perec’s descriptions of the city in 1974 as both familiar and distant today. Recordings from different vantage points are transcribed for each instrument tracing the minute details of the ordinary: “that which is generally not noted, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance.” Written for Parisian ensemble soundinitiative based on texts from George Perec’s Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien, translated by Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 1974/2010). Used with permission.

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