The computer instruments in this piece create a womb-like, dark environment in which the saxophone soloists performs a very gentle, lyrical melody. The sounds are rich and wet with resonance. This is an expression of warmth and subjectivity. In creating this music, I felt more than I thought. The music bristles with rhythmic energy, and once spent, quickly diminishes to a point of complete cessation.
Circuits is music for the mind as well.
Carefully controlled pitch systems and thematic manipulations provide a measure of objectivity and reason. The dichotomies between feminine and masculine, body and mind, emotion and reason, and subject and object have been central characteristics of Western thought for centuries. Matters of the body and subjectivism have become more closely linked to the feminine experience, while the mind and objectivism have been traditionally associated with masculine ways of being and doing. When I was working on my Master's degree at Yale, I remember having felt completely unwilling as a composer to draw upon the subjective, feminine parts of myself. For me, composing music was about the reasoned manipulation of materials into patterns whose logic could not be questioned.