given by Eva-Maria Houben, Harmjan Roeles

"The piece given may be characterized as a certain activity, a special kind of practice. We practice as a trio (two players and one producer), hoping that anything might emerge: we gather to share a beautiful time together, exchanging our hopes and longings, our suffering, and our pain.

Why should there be music at all? Faced with this question and considering the state of our world, artists could often find themselves drawn toward a sense of meaninglessness. But this is not the end. In the face of what is happening around us, we are driven to action: welcoming our practice as an affirmative “existential experience” (H. Lachenmann). While practicing, we may perceive that sounds, gestures, breaths, words, noises—as well as relationships, events, and coincidences—possess an energy that points beyond themselves and into everyday life: to the realities and possibilities within our own lives.

Thus, our practice fluctuates between doing and letting go. We are moving between the impulse to intervene, to fall into activity on one side – and the hope of change, the desire for something to happen on the other side (see E.M. Houben, Musical Practice as a Form of Life).

The players’ duo is an exercise in breathing. In breathing, we perceive different kinds of being two: sharing a space radically separated from each other, or closely connected. There are many steps between these extremes.

While practicing, we lose our sounds, our breaths, our gestures: we release them and give them up for lost. In these beautiful and fleeting moments, we learn that something is always given, only to be lost and then to be given once more.

Sawyer Editions is a small-batch label specializing in contemporary, experimental, and improvised music, especially of new and unreleased artists.

Demos always welcome.

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