“Sparks in the Wind”
Score created by Audrey Boy + Tong Fu
Music composed and performed by Ross Birdwise

Artist Statement – Audrey Boy + Tong Fu
The piece “Sparks in the Wind” was inspired by the feeling of sound. Yellows and oranges burst softly in the work like sparks of light on an empty sky, representing the melodies and harmonies of a summer evening. Abstract shapes and lines convey a sense of rhythm and time in the resonating, echoey space of the white background. Parted into sections, “Sparks in the Wind” balances structure with fluidity. The piece has soft intentions for a sense of crackle and flow as one’s eyes scan across the page. As a collaborative project, this image is a blend of musical interpretations and artistic style, which contributes to the pieces intrinsic contrasts which are connected by barriers.

Artist Statement – Ross Birdwise
I approached the score (and the text above) in an open-ended way, incorporating both analytic and intuitive approaches to interpretation, as well as literal and more figurative approaches to sound (and the blurring of these two tendencies). In some ways I looked at the score as a real score (to be read from left to right and top to bottom with clearly defined meanings associated to specific markings and larger structures or regions) but I also diverged from this approach, treating the score as a kind of impulse to trigger more open-ended musical activity. This makes it so my piece isn’t totally legible if you scan left to right and top to bottom although some events will make sense if you ‘read’ it that way. The text helped define (alongside the score) some of the sounds and structures I used, most notably a field recording of fire (but I also used rain, not mentioned in the text). I tried to use electronic and vocal sounds (and reverb and delays) to create metaphors of wind, rhythms, an echoing space, sparks of light, crackle and flow, among other things more abstractly defined in the score itself.

Close to the beginning, after the first ‘wind’ sound, a field recording of rain (with periodic large drops on an umbrella) enters. Though the text does not mention rain at all, the score has an image of rain drops on it and I made a choice to interpret it literally in this section, although I don’t actually have the same number of large rain drop sounds as there are drops in the score. Other sections deploy both percussive and short vocal sounds and electronic chirps to convey smaller geometric shapes and granular dots in the score, but again, I don’t follow the score exactly, it’s more a general idea or impression. The fire field recording also gets some processing to add to the interpretation of the geometric forms and rhythmic elements implied. The final section of the score is mostly based on layered vocal (and effects) improvisations (throat singing, breathy sounds, ‘regular’ singing, ingressive sounds, etc). I partially decided to be more vocal heavy in this section because there is a smile at the bottom of the score that seems to underly the long, seemingly wind-like lines and other geometric forms and eye-like shapes. I took the smile as meaning “use your mouth”. There is generally a lot of use of a B-major chord in my piece as well, corresponding in some ways to the lightness of the smile, and often presented in a light and airy way throughout the piece to hopefully create the general summertime evening vibe specified in the text.

This edition of the One-Page Score Project was led by Giorgio Magnanensi as a collaboration between Vancouver New Music and students in Keith Langergraber’s online ECUAD Foundation 165: Core Interdisciplinary Studio course that took place in summer 2020.

newmusic.org/media/one-page-score-project-audrey-boy-tong-fu-ross-birdwise/