RABA for Ensemble U

Composer's Note:

In the fall of 2014, I visited Marimetsa Raba, an Estonian bog. A hike through a fairytale forest eventually leads to 11 kilometers of floating wood planks allowing you to walk across an immense bog, the result of thousands of years of decay, layer upon layer of peat built up a millimeter at a time. Marimetsa Raba is many meters thick, representing millenia of history; it is stitched together and compacted by time, floating in a vast nature reserve.

I was inspired by the idea of an immense surface that seems somehow empty, perhaps even simple, but when your eye is drawn to a detail, it leaps from the landscape. And once you begin to probe the surface, you discover a fantastically complex ecosystem above and below. In Raba, the percussionist is probing the tam-tam, revealing the interwoven partials that combine to create the sound we think of as the instrument. The alto flute, violin, cello, and electronics are tuned to reinforce, interact, and interfere with these partials revealed by the percussionist. The interaction of all these elements activates the room, causing a pulsing, living audio experience in the performance space.

Ensemble U: and I decided to create a new version of Raba for the ensemble's instrumentation that also uses virtual reality to enable the audience to experience the Marimetsa Raba. With support from the St. Cloud State University 2017 Research Faculty Improvement Grant, Mark Gill of the St. Cloud State University Visualization Lab, and Rein Zobel and Maru VR, we created an immersive film of the bog from sunrise to sunset that the audience can explore during the performance.