Give me those days outstretched (duo)

More of a theatre piece. Watch the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6nqWzu3gZE

How I Hate Disease

rough draft from the electroacoustic workshop

5:Lattices (for 4) - workshop draft 2023.4.25

Premiered on December 12, 2023 in Musiikkitalo's Sonore Hall, Helsinki by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra. Jukka Rantamäki, conductor.


Program Note:

There are moments in our youth when we make realizations of the world around us—where what we've learned in the abstract becomes tangible. One of these eye openers for me was the summer of 2018. California gained a new season that painted the skies orange and the ground in ash. For me, that was the same month I moved across the country and would later move across the globe. Here in Finland, it's still a season that brings to mind tango under the midnight sun more so than dancing flames and rising smoke.

I often start making art from inspirations of text, imagery, or improvisation. Summer Dances Rise is a fanfare in which I musically depict themes of alarm, burning, distance, and dance. I wrote this poem as a starting place and accompaniment to the music:

grass is yellow and my birthland burns--
it’s august after all,
summer dances rise, unsetting
and i can go out
and breathe and dance on the air
where orange poppies don’t grow
and i know I’m here for this moment, unsettled

impromptu, by Niki Main

Summer Dances Rise

Give me those days outstretched (trio)

Venla Saavalainen, violin



Go on,
seize her by the sheets with your barren hands
tighter, tighter swift she slips pebble by pebble
hastens as you grapple clench 
grasp greechly till her grains turn to glass
screeching gently through the flesh of your palms


Wet soil from the bed
of the stream of creation
keeps firm in the fist

O stream,
pour yourself upon me
so that i may absorb that which is within you
but wash me out to see
nothing more than a mound of that loose gravel


Soon as i stepped in
The gaping hand flew ‘way
every gust a knife
that glints a moment

but i was not so significant as to redden those waters

Sonata for Solo Violin - "Born of Illite"

Laulaen

Fleeting Miniverse (kokle)

Loomis

Sunrise as an Eye

Ea was of water but could not cry

John Lee, cello


I wrote a poem to with the music, also by the same title:


as you eyed the sublime
while we watched the sunrise
i thought about the view from the window

a tree outside is really unremarkable except that
i can almost reach it if i stick my hand out
through the frigid air

there's not much to admire,
catching spiders is easier than birds
and the buntings haven't come yet

last year's nest
fell into the bellows
back in May

but i'll still sponge this pane
dwelling
biding the birds
until we sleep like snails

~

A minute life subsides
The window's broken and
I've built my first bird box

And they've come
Curled together and
We've took notice listening
And i'm walking out on you and
The wind doesn't bother me anymore
but

in the heat
they begin to whither
teetering on a weak branch

Bellower on the Branch

Countertenor, Composer, Poet
SF / NYC / Helsinki
nikimain.com

Niki Main

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