Street View Sketches (2021)

for violin, piano, and percussion (10’00”)

Street View Sketches is a collection of several short, standalone pieces—each meant to evoke a place in the world that is significant to me. Sometimes these pieces tell stories, other times they operate in more general terms. There are two things every piece shares in common, however:
The first is that, rather than just describing a location, each piece attempts to create a sonic impression of actually experiencing it. This might include emulating the general atmosphere of a place, or the sounds one hears while there, or even the kind of mindset one might be in when visiting. It is for this reason that I refer to these pieces as "sketches", as it gives the listener a taste of these elements, just like a sketch might.
The second commonality between each piece (or "sketch", as it were) is that every featured location can be found on Google Street View—whether it be a terrifyingly tiny shoulder of a highway, clinging to the precipice of a cliff in Yosemite Valley, or a plain, nondescript bridge over a creek in Kelowna, British Columbia. Every one of these locations can be reduced to GPS coordinates on a search engine navigation app, and a 360 degree snapshot taken from a moving vehicle. In fact, I have chosen to include GPS coordinates in the titles of every piece, so that anyone reading them can look up these "snapshots" for themselves.
Similar to the "sketches" and "impressions" I previously described, the internet is full of snapshots—soundbites—things that only give a taste of real, authentic experiences. Many see this as part of a dangerous disconnect from reality that is becoming alarmingly more prevalent in society. While I sympathize with these concerns, I wonder whether they could be mitigated if we just remained mindful of what these snapshots and soundbites really are: Impressions—glimpses of things we might someday see or do, or fond memories of things that once were.

Performed by cLoud Collective, December 5th, 2021.