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Vessels

from Hazy Heart Pump by Ted Hearne

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VESSELS
notes by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti

Around the time this piece was premiered, there was a day that Ted and I took the MetroNorth train together from New Haven to New York. We were sitting on the right side of the car, the seats were red, and we huddled together doing The New York Times crossword puzzle. Or was it the left side of the car? And were the seats dark blue?

When Miki and I first performed Vessels, Ted wrote that he was inspired by the idea that the more we revisit a memory, the more we change it:

If this is correct, it means the most potent recollections of the past are the memories that lay dormant for a long time. Their appearance to us in a flash brings us much closer to the truth of our past experiences than the comforting stories we tell ourselves over and over. The memories that we have left alone—for whatever reason stored deep in our mind—may be the clearest representation of time passed.

Do we selectively guard particular memories in order to protect ourselves, to protect certain important events from our past? Or is it the other way around—are our personal identities constructed by romanticizing merely those past events we happened to have forgotten for a while? [This trio] imagines the uncovering of a buried memory and its role as a vessel to the past.

Harmonic trills in the violin and viola evoke the ephemeral nature of these protected memories. Through the sheen of glittering harmonics, the viola is made more ominous by detuning the lowest string and occasionally employing an octave pedal. In doing so, the performer is also in a memory game, reading pitch and having to misremember its physical placement due to the different tuning. The piano enters toward the end of the piece—a dormant voice uncovered as an active element—but its strings are almost entirely muted, single notes ringing out longingly in a field of nearly pitchless taps. Each member of the ensemble is trying to uncover something they lost. Like the collective memory of a group of old friends, the piece explores the many sides of shared experience.

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from Hazy Heart Pump, released October 25, 2019
Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, viola; Miki-Sophia Cloud, violin; Ted Hearne, piano

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Ted Hearne Los Angeles, California

Ted Hearne is a composer, singer and bandleader.

The New York Times has praised. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory -- from any genre." ... more

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