Instrumentation: Fixed Media (2-channel), clarinet in Bb, cello, double bass, piano, electric guitar, drum set

Duration: 6 minutes

Premiere: Bang on a Can Summer Festival at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 27 July 2015. Fixed media vocals recorded by Evan Chambers.

Program Note: 

“I find that people who come from small places have a very strong sense of who they are.” – Nic Gareiss

I have never come from a small place. I’ve spent my life jumping around from Edinburgh, to Chicago, to Pittsburgh—city after city after city. But in 2012, for the first time in my life, I moved to a smaller place. In Ann Arbor, Michigan my fiddle and I were swallowed, heads-first, into the traditional Irish music scene. Showing up to familiar faces and tunes and conversation at Conor O’Neill’s on Main St. every Sunday night provided a sense of community I’d never before experienced.

Over the last few years, there’s been this microscopic point inside of me that has started to grow. That point is that sense of belonging, that sense of friendship, that sense of love, that sense of community, that sense of grounding, that inkling of a sense of who… It’s been growing. And that is everything.

Video Percussion Guide for "a sense of who" by Chris Sies of Latitude 49