March of the Women
“What Lies Beneath” was created as part of Australian Flautist, Eliza Shephard’s, March of the Women project.
This year, Eliza teamed up with some of the most innovative and diverse female flautists from across Australia and around the world. Each of the 31 musicians (one for each day of March, for International Women’s Day) selected a work by a different Australian female composer to record as part of three CDs.
Flautist Alyse Faith asked if I would write her piece for the project, and together with violist Sandra Ionescu, "What Lies Beneath” was born!
Listen to it here on Spotify!
What Lies Beneath
L-R: Eliza Shephard, Julia Potter, Alyse Faith, Sandra Ionescu
Alyse Faith and Sandra Ionescu in rehearsal
About the piece:
The Australian landscape is rife with hidden stories that can be discovered through the ground on which we stand. All we need for a glimpse into the window of our past is to delve into the earth beneath our feet. The rocks and minerals, the relics and bones, the roots and the soil; they have history. Dig further and patterns emerge through the layers in the soil, there are sequences in the ways the rocks have been shaped.
There is a geological term which captures this notion, uniformitarianism. This is the thought that the Earth has always changed in uniform ways, which can be mapped by examining the stratigraphy of the soil beneath. Scientists can look at modern-day geologic events, as sudden as an earthquake, or as slow as the erosion of a river valley, to see the Earth’s past events. We can sift through layers of earth as layers of history; what lies underneath will tell us what has lain before.
What Lies Beneath explores these concepts; the Australian landscape, layers of earth, and looking into the past. The piece begins with a soundscape comprising of sound recordings taken in Djaara and Taungurung Country, near Trentham in Victoria. The music then takes the listener below the surface, where the call of birds is no longer audible, to discover the layers beneath. From here, the piece explores layers in many forms. Through repetition of melody, layering of melody, and through the gradual shifting of the music.