Work
Between Waters
for shō and guitar
About
hile working on 2019’s Fish in Pink Gelatine, I started thinking of the foregrounded musical element as a ‘fish’, and the accompanimental texture, the medium it moves through, as a ‘water’. Both shō and guitar have historic use as chord instruments—accompaniment instruments, ‘waters’ to me—and Between Waters is built on the two performers passing triads back and forth. Traditionally, the shō is tuned to A430, and keeping the guitar at A440 lets the harmony drift down in steps of about a quarter-tone.
Commissioned note
Commissioned by Dylan Lardelli with assistance from Creative New Zealand