Written for Heather Roche. I am exceptionally grateful to her for offering her time and expertise in writing and performing this piece.

…to notice autumn aromas, through…—comprising a fixed media constituting three pre-recorded parts and instructions for live performance—utilises the detailed understanding of clarinet multiphonics afforded by the Garden of Forking Paths project to deepen my examination of the liminality-in-itself. The piece aims to undermine any emergent stability of pitches through insisting that the ‘dance of agency’ between performer—specifically Heather—and instrument is in a state of permanent liminality. Neither’s agency ever dominates, rather the piece is a process of simultaneous, paradoxical, goal-oriented procedures which serve to interfere with each other, subsequently always alluding to but never reaching a telos.

A short video presentation is linked below that aesthetically positions and outlines the processes of the piece. This was part of the Vibrant Practices Symposium held virtually 16–17 April 2021, which is also where Heather premiered the piece.

Performed by and written for Heather Roche. As if on a hunt for matsutake mushrooms—which can only grow in areas disturbed by humans—the faltering but desired pitches only reveal themselves as a result of this precarity between agencies. Heather must allow her instrument to bloom, but dismiss or restrict any promising buds. As a result, the porousness of the agencies of the instrument and Heather is highlighted; the two become entangled, an ever-transitioning assemblage of plateauing possibilities, encouraging a mode of being that delves into the contextual nature of instability.