Program note

When I received this commission to write for Standing Wave, I was asked by the ensemble to consider the idea of a “parallax” and how I could represent that musically. A parallax describes when the same point is viewed from two different angles. After some thought, I came to the epiphany that the sonic equivalent to a parallax is an animal song, which is understood extremely differently when a human hears it versus an animal. Then, I researched different animal songs and came across that of a blue whale. Blue whales - an endangered species – utter their songs at such low frequencies that they are impossible to hear as songs by humans unless they are transposed up several octaves. The material in this piece is inspired by and created from blue whale songs. My intention in writing this piece was to present these songs so that humans could relate to them more and with any hope, take further steps to protect this species that is on the verge of extinction.