"I wrote this...whatever this is in a fit last night. After essentially laying on the couch for an hour of nothing but experiencing covid anxiety trauma responses in my body from seeing my friends catch covid, watching shows cancel, feeling the inevitability of a shutdown, this exploded out of me.
I don't know what it sounds like. If you do - I'd love to hear it." 

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This is what I posted to Facebook on January 4th, 2022. And it's true - I was going through a fit of anxiety when I was hit with the concept for this score, and it was written in a fury in about 10 minutes. The title, Pressure, seemed to encompass how the piece came to be, the pain in my chest, the tension in the air.

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To my amazement, it resonated deeply to so many more than I was expecting. I posted it, thinking maybe 20 weird-new-music people would think it was neat, and instead I found myself looking at hundreds of likes, comments, enthusiastic replies from musicians and scientists, teachers, and choreographers. There was something about the disintegration of the notes into the black paint that seemed to capture the time for so many others. I felt suddenly more connected to the world, to the other human beings behind the screens.

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And then, the very next morning, a video greeted me in my inbox of pianist Ben Gaunt, performing the piece - a performer I had never met, but knew just from the magic of the internet. It was entrancing. The sounds he created were exactly the way I saw the page. 

The next day, a video from Keith Eisenbrey on harpsichord, and then another from Steve Treseler on saxophone. They all saw and interpreted the piece differently, but the energy was the same, the emotion was captivating. I knew then that this graphic score worked exactly as intended.