Alex Shapiro

Immersion

Immersion brings listeners on a sonic journey into a private, aquatic realm. Beneath the surface of the ocean is a world of liquid beauty and grace hidden from our eyes and from our imagination. Follow your ears and your heart to the deepest unseen places we often neglect to consider. Shapiro's electroacoustic wind symphony to the sea is at once a heartfelt, exciting, and deeply beautiful invocation to the Earth's most fragile environment. DEPTH, the opening movement, is an anthem to an underworld of grandeur that is home to the tiniest, and the largest, creatures on Earth, each equally imperiled by the reckless behavior of our human species. We must honor, respect, and marvel at these lives, rather than destroy them. SURFACE, the second movement, is a mini percussion concerto that reflects a Harbor seal's dramatic lunchtime assault on a Giant Pacific octopus, witnessed by the composer from her studio as she began writing this movement. A sudden explosion through the calm water revealed two animals flailing in battle one moment, then diving below to deceptive stillness ... until the next violent eruption. The seal eventually won its meal, but not without the chaos of significant effort. In this habitat of life and struggle, every day brings a challenge. BENEATH, the final movement, features the heart-wrenching song of a Pacific Humpback whale guiding us through the sea. Even in this magnificent environment of life and hope, exquisite creatures remain vulnerable to events triggered from beyond their fragile sanctuary. While IMMERSION was composed as a three movement symphony, each of the movements is also designed to be programmed alone, or in any combination. To perform the piece, you'll need an audio system capable of playing the prerecorded audio tracks from a laptop computer via a small digital audio interface connected to an audio mixer. Download information is provided with the materials.