in us it is deep as the sea

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commissioned by Slide Action

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This piece began with the image of one long ocean wave. I started by taking a short wave sound, around ten seconds, and stretching it gradually until it became less like a recorded wave and more like a slow-moving form.

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That process became the structure of the piece. From a distance, the music may feel like one large swell, slowly rising, widening and folding back into itself. But within that larger motion are many smaller waves: microtonal beating, collective glissandi, breath sounds, rough edges and tiny ornaments.

 

The work also draws on Zhuangzi’s idea that perception changes with relation: near and far, large and small, unified and fragmented are never fixed. What appears as one thing from afar becomes full of detail when heard closely.

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Rilke’s line, “The world is large, but in us it is deep as the sea,” became an emotional centre for the piece. Here, depth is not only spatial, but internal. The trombone quartet becomes an inner seascape, where one vast wave contains countless smaller waves.​