Floodplain (2022)

A floodplain is a low-lying area of land near a river whose role changes depending on precipitation and weather — it can morph from a fertile home for grasses, plant and animal life to a silty bed for the swollen river. In writing Floodplain, I was inspired by this landscape that is both lush and dangerous. Musically, I used a rhythmic figure made of sextuplets, which, unifies the work and alternatively propels it in different directions. I started writing Floodplain at the beginning of 2020. Once it became clear that the premiere would need to be moved due to COVID-19, I put the work on the shelf and didn’t look at it for about two years. In the interim, my concepts of unpredictability and the creative fertility found in it were fundamentally re-shaped, and Floodplain emerged as a wholly different work than the one I had conceived before the pandemic.