I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds

Ten years before composing "I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds", I composed my Trio, for violin, piano, and percussion (plus electronics) for Toronto’s Arraymusic Ensemble. I developed several important compositional practices during my work on that piece that I still employ today, one of which is my approach to combining electronic sounds with live performers. In my Trio, the electronics are fairly sparse, consisting entirely of a few sustained tones that support the instrumentalists and help to define the formal structure. Although electronics are often more significantly audible in many of my works, the relationship between performers and electronic sounds, which places a more significant emphasis on the acoustic sounds made by performers, has remained fairly consistent.

I composed the Trio at an important transitional period in my life, right as I started my first academic position and shortly after getting married and finishing my Ph.D. For whatever reason, I found myself thinking about that time and composing the Trio while I was working on I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds, and so as a kind of homage to myself I decided to blatantly rip off the technique I first developed for the Trio of dropping in a couple of sustained sounds to help differentiate form. I stood on the shore and looked up at the birds was composed in fall/ winter 2013-14.