Work
the convergence of oceans
for orchestra
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About
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This work explores the entanglings of a multitude of different potentials for convergence, ranging from the abstract to the more literal. The central idea to this work is that of oceans converging, a happening that is both a powerful image and also something with a oceanographic connection, with convergence zones being areas where ocean currents converge and engage in a process known as downwelling. For this piece I was interested in ideas of musical convergence and trying to find ways to bring together a broad range of sounds, techniques, and indeed objects. Convergence becomes embedded in the piece through ideas of shared sonic identity and function, with sounds and instruments gaining elaborated and specific meanings through their interactions with the broader sonic fabric of the orchestra. As a piece written for the 2023 New Zealand National Youth Orchestra it was fitting that convergence should become such a strong theme in this work as the orchestra itself is in many ways a convergence of exceedingly talented young musicians for a week of high quality music making. The fact that the majority of the course and the first performance of this work was in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) which sits off the coast of a particularly turbulent section of ocean was yet another reason to explore these ideas of oceanic convergence.
Sitting alongside these ideas, however, was the striking elusiveness of oceanic convergence as a concept and how messy it becomes in practice. There is no one fixed point at which oceanographic convergence occurs, with these points shifting depending on many environmental factors, while on a broader level I was captivated by the ways in which the ocean more generally resists boundaries, be that in resisting the lines of mapmakers seeking to divide it cleanly or, perhaps more pressingly, the way the ocean is encroaching in many areas of our life, be that through erosion, sea level rise or any of a number of other ways the ocean disrupts any idea we may have of it as a fixed and containable entity.