Snow Grass (two part)

A piece I’ve been working on in multiple different iterations since its premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Upon arrival to Suomenlinna, I captured some images of the melting snow and touched them up in photoshop to zoom in on the details. It was at this moment that I settled upon the title for this piece. To me, the bouncing overtones (either live with minimal delay, or double tracked) emulate the subtle reveal of the grass underneath the snow. It almost looks like fairy floss.

Snow Grass (Anna, Otta)

Vocals tracked over the 2 part bass recording of Snow Grass.
A preliminary experiment using elements of the Finnish language in improvisation/vocal gestures.

I focused on two words: Antaa (give) and ota (take), and gradually abstracted these into different words, responding to a natural syllabic rhythm during the improvisation. These ended up taking the same of ‘Annaa’ and ‘Ottaa’.