Miya Ando

Written in 2018 for solo flute (at least 8 minutes)

With this piece, I’m more interested in creating a space, or a place for you, the performer, rather than providing a strict hierarchical relationship between composer and performer. You and I. On some level, I have attempted to give a general direction to this space. “It’s over there.” In summary, the piece is very quiet with long notes, some short notes, many pauses, and a specific harmonic framework. Still, this is only the vaguest idea: the details of time, color, or personality are left for you.

 Miya Ando (b. 1978) is an American artist. This piece is my reflection on her brilliant work and aesthetic philosophy, with an attempt to articulate them sonically.

“Miya Ando combines metals, reflectivity, and light to create subtly beautiful metal canvases and sculpture. “Ultimately I am interested in the study of subtraction to the point of purity, simplicity and refinement,” she says of the quiet, abstract environments she creates. Burnishing and chemical treatment of the metal results in varied textures and degrees of sheen in her richly colored monochromatic metal sheets, which simultaneously evoke Mark Rothko paintings and landscapes. Striving to find a universal vocabulary, Ando says she relies on light and ‘a lot of vernacular that is inspired by nature.’” – Artsy.net

 I’m sad to say that I don’t really remember anything about the writing process of this piece other than sitting in a studio at UNT ne carefully the few notes that this piece has. Thinking about the pitches as a melody but being as deliberate as I could with duration of the pitches and of the breath of the piece. I’ve heard performances of the piece that have gone much longer than the 8 minutes indicated here and, in the score, but even in those long pieces with sustain silence, I feel that the proportion and the relationship between the tones holds true. These small shimmers of light feel connected and come in and out of the breath of the player, only just humming on the edge of silence.

 In many ways, I think this piece precedes a lot of the material I worked on with my Void Series – more on those in the future.