An Indecipherable Cause

In early November, I collaborated on a soundtrack for a shadow puppet play created by Kimi Eisle called In/Out of the Shadows. Kimi writes, this is “a shadow puppet theater tribute to the Alaskan Yellow Cedar tree (Calliptrosis nootkatensis), a tree that grows in coastal Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. In the last 100 years, the tree has been dying off due to climate change. In the poorly drained soils of low-lying muskegs, it once thrived as snowpack insulating its delicate root systems from the cold. Now, warming temperatures have meant more rain than snow leaving the tree vulnerable to freezing.”

Sarah and I began by improvising together, playing with sounds and combinations of my voice and her cello. We improvised looking at the paper-cut images as Kimi created them, responding to the images with sounds, words, colors, musical techniques, dynamics, and accents. Sometimes we tried to illustrate an image in the play with our music, and other times we tried to illustrate a feeling, quality, or mood. After each run-through, Kimi told us what fit with her vision for the piece—what to do more of and what to leave behind. She gave us a lot of creative freedom to imagine all the ways a snow storm is audible, what a musical motif for industry could be, how the humorous and sad image of the trees packing up their suitcases and walking away might sound.

In early November, I collaborated on a soundtrack for a shadow puppet play created by Kimi Eisle called In/Out of the Shadows. Kimi writes, this is “a shadow puppet theater tribute to the Alaskan Yellow Cedar tree (Calliptrosis nootkatensis), a tree that grows in coastal Southeast Alaska and British Columbia. In the last 100 years, the tree has been dying off due to climate change. In the poorly drained soils of low-lying muskegs, it once thrived as snowpack insulating its delicate root systems from the cold. Now, warming temperatures have meant more rain than snow leaving the tree vulnerable to freezing.”

Sarah and I began by improvising together, playing with sounds and combinations of my voice and her cello. We improvised looking at the paper-cut images as Kimi created them, responding to the images with sounds, words, colors, musical techniques, dynamics, and accents. Sometimes we tried to illustrate an image in the play with our music, and other times we tried to illustrate a feeling, quality, or mood. After each run-through, Kimi told us what fit with her vision for the piece—what to do more of and what to leave behind. She gave us a lot of creative freedom to imagine all the ways a snow storm is audible, what a musical motif for industry could be, how the humorous and sad image of the trees packing up their suitcases and walking away might sound.