For Loss

Dedicated to the victims and survivors of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. On March 11, 2011, a few days after the premiere of my song cycle de stroom in Singapore, the Tohoku region of Japan was devastated by the strongest earthquake and tsunami in the recorded history of it's country. Besides rearranging an airline ticket for one of my musicians back to the United States not via Tokyo, the impact of the tragedy was not immediate. However melancholic the situation, my response to the event was limited to sending regards to my Japanese friends and to following the news of the aftermath. A few months later on a midsummer night, Hideaki Onishi, a colleague of mine, sent me an on-line article which documented his volunteer work in the earthquake-affected areas. I was very touched by the prose and the images of different sites he had visited. Towards the end of the article, there were two photos taken at a deserted beach called Tsukihama near the city of Higashi-Matsushima. The photos showed Hideaki kneeling down, playing the naked keyboard of a destroyed piano which had washed up on shore among a pile of debris. The body of the piano was nowhere in sight. 'The keys moved reluctantly when I pushed them down hard,' Hideaki wrote, 'but refused to make sound. I felt an unexplainable void and helplessness inside me.' Hideaki Onishi web page. I was not able to control my tears and the images have haunted me since. For months before I read the article, there had been a vision of a low and long string sound recurring in my head. It turned out to be a premonition, a prelude to for loss. For loss was conceived as a requiem ritualis, lamenting the tragic loss of lives and hopes which struck me so acutely upon seeing the piano on the beach. I would make a condemned piano sound one last time before being laid to rest-a threnody for it's twin spirit at Tsukihama whose life had been violently cut short and whose sound had been abruptly silenced. It took me a few months to find a condemned piano. It was a strong Russian upright piano called '??????????' (Russian for Tchaikovsky). It took me another two months to tune and prepare it. I had in mind some images of sound and I had also been inspired by Tchaikovsky. It had spoken to me. for loss opens up an obscure corner within our protected environment for the contemplation of horror and fragility.