Duration: 15 min.

It is usually difficult to distinguish the only invention of a composer from a previously assimilated material or a pure borrowing. With Slices, I wanted to compose a personal landscape of the violin from different sources: written fragments, concrete sounds, musical memories or the idiomatic gestures of a concerto cadenza.

In this heterogeneous matter, I’ve been searching for continuities which could be the premises to a coherent form, shaping a space between sounds and moving across. The piece builds up with no narration, in the way of memory or dreams, guided by the kind of reason that crosses all thresholds – those built by language and habits.

Hopefully, imagination emerges between sounds, so tenuously that memory misleads itself most of the time ; we remember chimeras that never existed and believe that we’ve invented something we already learned. Only the commitment of composition remains: do not forget anything, leave nothing aside that could seal the unity of a work.

The title of the piece is an allusion to the ribs of the violin (« éclisses » in French) which etymology dates back to the old French « esclicer », which meant « split into pieces » and gave the word « slice » in English.

Slices is dedicated to Winnie Huang.