Sparkita and Her Kittens - Christine Southworth
I wrote Sparkita and Her Kittens in a hilltop castle town in Croatia in July 2014, surrounded by a beautiful calico cat, who we named “Sparkita”, and her five kittens. The piece is based on a midi score to a Bollywood soundtrack, compressed into two tracks and then carefully weeded and sculpted to create this composition for solo piano. It has elements of the original piece that jump out throughout, little melodies and rhythms and grooves, but it is so unrecognizable that in fact I haven’t been able to figure which one it was based on! There are throughout several melodies and rhythms going on at once, played between Sarah’s two hands. I chose this process because of Terry's interest in Indian music (though I’m not sure how interested he is in Bollywood music) but also I think he would have liked Sparkita and her kittens, and I wanted to create something that reflected their episodic play, naps and daydreams, chasing butterflies and climbing the kiwi tree across the street.
- Christine Southworth
Christine Southworth (b. 1978) is a composer and video artist based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and musics from cultures around the world, her music employs sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data from volcanoes. Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and an M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. Her compositions have been performed by ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Gamelan Galak Tika, Calder Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gamelan Semara Ratih, California EAR Unit, Andrew W.K., and Ensemble Robot. She has received awards from the American Music Center, LEF Foundation, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts, and MAP Fund. Website:
www.kotekan.com