The Seed Knows
Title: The Seed Knows
Year Completed: 2020
Duration: 5 mins
Instrumentation: violin and piano
Credit: Commissioned by Duo Concertante, with support from the Canada Council's New Chapters program for Duo Concertante's Ecology of Being project
Premiere: August 13 2020, online as part of the Tuckamore Chamber Music Festival.
Program Note:
What is a seed? A promise, a hope, the start of something new. It's also the end of what came before, a message for the future, blueprints, instructions.There is a mystery and also a simplicity to a seed. It is one of the most confident and clear and astounding parts of our ecosystem that I can think of.
I wrote The Seed Knows with an ear towards today's and tomorrow's ecological concerns, my own growing family, and fascinating research on plant sentience.You'll hear a repeating note in the piano - this is the core of the seed. It is surrounded by enveloping harmonies - almost symmetrical! Flaws exist in the symmetry - it allows for evolution.The violin echoes and amplifies the seed core with vibrant and shifting timbres, and rises slowly up from the core. Plant seeds, human seeds, idea seeds - we must trust the knowledge contained in these almost-perfect beings.