c———o———m——po———s——iti—o—n——s l—i——m——n——— h
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e In this duo for Stacy Pelinka and Leighton Fong, I continue to explore ideas about musical time that have been a thread of my recent work. The moment of the musical "now", a chord being brought into existence, is not an instant, but rather a small window, the width of which varies continuously throughout the performance. In this new work, I create a performance context in which that window may be enlarged to the point that its contents become promoted to the level of musical material. It represents a new type of counter- point with its own compositional and performance practice. The electronics consist of realtime manipulations of audio collected from electronic stethoscopes. The recordings were made during a performance of a collaboration between MacCallum and choreographer Teoma Naccarato entitled III:Synchronism (iii-iii-iii.org), which consists of intimate of one-on-one performances in which issues of mutual trust, consent, and play are negotiated nonverbally, as the pair transgresses boundaries of internal versus external, and self, other, and environment. In this work, the duo goes through the process of limning---illuminating---the auditory traces left behind by bodies as they engaged in an intimate experience with a stranger. Limn consists of two pieces, one for electronics, and the other for flute and cello. Either piece may be played separately, or they may both be played simultaneously. If the electronics are played on their own, they should be di used using no fewer than 8 speakers, preferably in a medium-to-large reverberant space. When the electronics are played together with the instrumental piece, the electronics should be di used using 2 small speakers placed very near to the two musicians. The instruments should not be amplified, and the electronics should be balanced with the instrumental parts striving for a feeling of intimacy.