My Saariaho Journey

Throughout my career, I've had the good fortune to work on several pieces by Kaija Saariaho. Saariaho was a pioneer in the augmentation of live music with electronics, but that didn't factor into all of her works. In fact, 3 of the 4 pieces of hers that I've played have been acoustic only.

But the fourth, Petals, was an incredibly cool experience. I recorded it during my time at New World Symphony as part of a project titled "Spectral Sounds". A big part of the New World experience is participating in Fellow-led initiatives, better known to Fellows as BLUE Projects. In this particular project, my colleague Scott Leger was leading an inquiry into spectral music, often based upon the new understanding of the scientific properties of sound that came in the 20th century.

Petals is not necessarily what will come to mind immediately when thinking about "electronic music". There's not a fixed audio track with which the musician plays. Instead, there is software that processes the sound of the cello and feeds it back out through the speakers. If you take a look below, you can see both a deeper explanation of this process and my recording of it.

Another one of Saariaho's pieces gave me a particularly rich experience back in graduate school. I was asked to play her trio, Je sens une deuxième cœur, which deviates from the traditional piano trio paradigm, in that the violin is replaced with a viola. It's a fabulous work that juxtaposes elegant gossamer and raw emotion. We had the privilege of working with the composer, and she emphasized this strongly. She gave us the courage to lean in and not be afraid to go to extremes, something that I take with me to this day.