Alternative Facts

My 20 minute quartet, Alternative Facts, was composed with both professional and advanced school ensembles in mind. The piece features a combination of conventional percussion instruments and reclaimed materials — paper and cardboard. Each group performing the piece assembles their own materials and each player assembles an instrument of seven found sound objects, making each performance distinctive.

Many of these details were developed in collaboration with Talujon.

I do not usually write pieces “about” something, unless there is a text involved, but I have been trying to incorporate text and ideas about the climate crisis in recent pieces. This is not just to make a timely story, but because I feel that the crisis colors everything we do now – even with so many difficult issues we face. the new work will grapple with the issue on multiple levels, most explicitly in the use of reclaimed materials as instruments. Alternative Facts often includes text that is recited in some movements, often rhythmically synchronized with the playing. Much of this text consists of “found poetry” assembled by me from the publicly available, obsessive, repetitive, climate-change denying tweets and rants of a well-known New York real estate “developer” and TV personality.

–Eric Chasalow