Description
I love composing. In a good way, my nerve endings for sound are always dialed up high – actually, they are on perpetual alert. If I hear one note or chord or if, for example, I play one on an instrument, I get lit up as if electric shock ribbons instantly race from my ears and fingertips to my imagination and then my creativity and craft play high-speed ping-pong! where the ball is bouncing back and forth 100 times a second. The outcomes are unpredictable to me. I stay absolutely flexible. Everything is malleable, springy, stretchy, coil-able, color-able, twistable, bouncing, zig-zagging, and splinter-able. It feels like I am dancing with contrapuntal flickering sonic lights that accumulate into a spinning pinwheel spawning sound and form. I slide, skate, swivel, and spin with my materials - crafting nuance and finesse - and then I sculpt, shape, chisel, fashion, and form. At the end of all of that, I feel as if the piece wrote me –not as if I wrote the piece! My music has its own inner life. If I listen carefully, the piece I am composing will tell me what it next needs.' - Augusta Read Thomas, transcribed from the Miller Theatre at Columbia University MISSION COMMISSION Podcast interview
