We are environments for each other

Developed over ten years of collaborative work between Scott McLaughlin, violinist Mira Benjamin and pianist Zubin Kanga. 'We are environments for each other' continues McLaughlin’s long standing work with the idea of ‘material indeterminacy’, using the way an instrument responds contingently in the hands of a performer to guide emergent musical forms. The piece is a trio for two humans and a third agent, the assemblage of piano strings, violin strings and electromagnetic resonator that itself makes decisions about which sounds emerge. The music exists not as sequences of predetermined sounds but as sets of possibilities; areas of exploration for the performers to carefully unfold. The instruments are no longer texturally distinct, as the electric violin becomes part of a feedback system that resonates the strings of the piano, merging together in a manner that is at once a single entangled thing, and two competing inputs to a complex system.