a murder of cranes/a siege of crows (2022) for two kingma flutes and fixed media

in late 2021, i was conducting research on contemporary music for shakuhachi, specifically works that use fixed media. through my research through countless articles and facebook conversations, i got to meet amazing new music flutist and composer Gavin Stewart.

Gavin’s PhD work has focused on contemporary music inspired by shakuhachi honkyoku. After speaking over zoom, we decided to sit down and collaborate on a duo for two Kingma flutes and fixed media that would feature sounds inspired by shakuhachi lore.

i wrote this piece between february and march 2022 while i was an artist in residence at Leveld Kunstnartun, in Norway. circumstances made it impossible for the other artists in residence to attend and i was alone for three whole weeks in the woods. once a week the director of the artist colony, Lars, would visit me and drive me to the center of town so i could get groceries for the week. it was then back to the house where i sat and absorbed the sounds around me.

kinko-ryū shakuhachi honkyoku draw inspiration from myths passed on from the original fuké zen monks who played shakuhachi during the Edo period, as well as drew on inspiration from the sounds around them and popular music of the time. the title a murder of cranes/a siege of crows is derived from the words used to describe groups of cranes and crows (murder of crows/siege of cranes), and is riffing on —albeit incredibly loosely— on a shakuhachi honkyoku, tsuru no sugumori 鶴の巣籠, often translated as “the nesting of cranes.” The piece is programmatic, describing the life cycle of the family of nesting cranes, watching them take flight, recreating the sounds of flapping wings etc. Here in this piece, I used samples of cranes in Hokkaido crying, and then processed the sounds in Ableton Live.

a murder of cranes/a siege of crows is dedicated to Gavin Stewart and is 13-14 minutes long.

score and fixed media can be purchased here