Song of a Breathless Body

Forces: Percussion and Accordion

Song of a breathless body is an exploration of a kind of paralysis. To be breathless is an experience of futile or seemingly futile urgency and that can only be met with a kind of inertia; we cannot move forward in thought or in action unless we can gather ourselves up.

The accordion is an instrument that breathes. So it’s unusual in that you don’t supply it with air, you just give it the energy to take up its own air; so I really tried to capture that element but also to in a sense force it to find ways to express itself – ways to sing – with that mechanism in some way compromised or even working against it; its from that starting point that the whole piece kind of spirals in on itself.