Informal Worship (2024)

for string quartet

Duration: 8'

Premiere: July 25, 2024 @ Studzinski Recital Hall, Brunswick, Maine (as part of the 2024 Bowdoin International Music Festival)

Lauren Edwards & Anant Malpani (violin), Grace Leonard (viola), and Kyle Pinzon (cello)

Programme Note:

Informal Worship is based on the eponymous exhibition by American artist, Tom Burckhardt. Featuring several hundred small collages in this collection, Burckharft uses “found text” from thrifted books and adds bright colours, pattern, and shapes, exploring the idea of referential meaning and the re-contextualization of text and words.

With this piece, I aimed to explore Burckhardt’s collage method and apply it to the medium of the string quatet. In doing so, I collected a few dozen excerpts and fragments from various canonical string quartets – everything from Haydn to Ravel to Thomas Ades – and pieced them back together to create new composite material.

At times, these references may be quite evident, while at other times the presentation of these quotes are more discrete. What became interesting throughout the writing process was playing with how various elements from disparate existing materials could be superimposed on one another, thus removing much of the existing meaning that this fragments held. Much like Tom Burckhardt’s collection of book titles and chapter headings, when removed from their original context these musical references take on a new life and mould to the shapes and ideas presented around them.

Informal Worship was written as part of the 2024 Bowdoin International Music Festival: Composition Program.