Identity

For me, the most unusual part of this piece is the way it was made.

I never learned to play a recorder.

Sure, I know how it works and sounds - but know only as a composer, through books, scores and audio examples.

It's obvious meanwhile that a performer's experience and sense of instrument is much deeper and more detailed.

So my starting point was to shorten the distance between me and the instrument I was writing for, to make it more intimate.

All preliminary knowledge have to be rejected or at least reconsidered during practice sessions, the act of composition have to begin from scratch, with no preconceived ideas of what it should be.

Nothing about form, material, development, sound, pitch system, rhythmic structure etc. Just making some personal way through the realm of instrument, instead.

The piece is built up entirely of small finger displacements - for even the result of each new fingers position can be a complete surprise.

It's like a slow pacing in the fog - where your field of view ends very close and you need to find and control each new step, moving forward blindly, having no ideas of what is waiting ahead and how long the journey will last.

***

The piece was commissioned by ums'n'jip (Switzerland).

WP was in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 09.12.2011, by ums'n'jip.

The piece was performed by ums'n'jip many times in Russia, Switzerland, France, Greece, Turkey, Latvia, Spain, Japan, Georgia, Germany and Argentina.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1sEUliaBQo