Program Note

The first iteration of if it stops was written for The Now Hear Ensemble in 2013 and appeared on my masters recital in that same year. Since then, it has been updated for this new instrumentation with a new electronics part. Throughout the work a very famous poem by T.S. Eliot entitled The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is heard, echoing the overarching topic of this piece: mortality. One can also hear field recordings taken at different stages in my life: a poker game with friends, my brother in law’s father playing and singing gospel piano in a crowded room, sounds of a street fair in San Francisco. Abstractly, if it stops is a reflection on the frailty of our physical bodies and their eventual or sudden, inevitable breakdown.