Resonance Lines

The seeds that developed into this project were planted in 2008 at the Creative Dialogue Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I spent a week working closely with cellist Anssi Karttunen and composer Kaija Saariaho. This was my first experience learning and performing Saariaho’s Sept Papillons. I was astonished to hear these vividly compelling, yet unfamiliar sounds emerge from an instrument I had been playing for decades and exhilarated by the new ways of listening and openness to the unexpected that the piece invites. The truly mind-altering aspect of the workshop was observing the close collaborative relationship between Karttunen and Saariaho—a decades-long partnership and friendship built upon solving creative challenges together, designing new experiences (including the workshop itself), and advocating for each other’s work and the work of their friends and colleagues. Working with each of them unlocked different layers of meaning and insight into the processes of creating and sharing the piece. The experience introduced me to a new paradigm for how to be a collaborator and for how a performer’s involvement with the creation of a piece can positively influence the outcome, leading to repertoire that reflects both the composer and performer’s creative voices.

A web of interrelated experiences spun out from this origin point. A year later, I found myself at the Britten-Pears Contemporary Workshop in Aldeburgh, England, discussing Saariaho’s music with Karttunen again, but this time in the very spot where Benjamin Britten and Mstislav Rostropovich worked together to bring several of Britten’s works for cello to life, including the Suite for Cello, Op. 72 (the wonderful cover art by UK artist Ed Fairburn references this moment). It was around this time that I began working on my own commissioning projects, one of the first of which was in manus tuas by Caroline Shaw and set out on a new course focused on pursuing further collaborative experiences in this vein. In the decade since, this approach has led to becoming an active performer and advocate for Saariaho and Karttunen’s projects; forming my duo New Morse Code with percussionist Michael Compitello on the founding principle of creating new repertoire through long-term collaboration; and developing projects to facilitate this type of work for others including the Avaloch Farm New Music Initiative, which is where I first met the indefatigable pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff.

The works on the album share an ethos of nostalgia for the ephemeral. Each piece makes distinct references to music from the past, and in doing so, sheds light on the unique personalities of the creative collaborators and how they used their voices to shape elements from their collective musical histories into new, personally relevant forms. That the repertoire on this album also highlights the voices of female, LGBTQ+, and multiracial composers reflects an intersection of identities which resonates with my own experience as a musician, artist, and person.”

Hannah Collins, Cello