Sarah Hetrick
Sarah Hetrick performs Charlotte Bray's Circling Point
Live recording from Fall of 2020
Sarah Hetrick, saxophone
Giyong Ahn, piano
Program Notes
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Quietly sailing through a suspended landscape, 'Circling Point', for alto saxophone and piano, focuses on the timbre of the instruments in a slow, yet almost constantly pulsating, meditation. As if in one breath, the piece sees a gradual expansion of pitch and intensity. A whispered, 'sotto voce' line threads two voices together in a delicate and intimate dialogue where they are constantly influences by the other. The material develops akin to a photo gradually emerging in a dark room.
Tomas Transtromer's poem 'Ostinato' resounds with the piece:
Under the buzzard's circling point of stillness
ocean rolls resoundingly on in daylight,
blindly chews its bridle of weed and snorts up
foam over beaches
Earth is veiled in darkness where bats can sense their way. The buzzard stops and becomes a star now.
Ocean rolls resoundingly on and snorts up
foam over beaches.
