Christopher Cerrone

Statement

These works show the two layers I Have No Face is built from — the human voices and the impersonal weather that runs beneath them.

Canto Selah is the character layer: a short, reflective movement for solo live voice, pop-oriented rather than operatic and electronic throughout. Built around mirrors and mirroring, it sets the vocalist in dialogue with pre-recorded versions of herself — the self questioning and answering itself. That is how the interior monologues of I Have No Face will work.

Beaufort Scales is the other layer: the impersonal one. A longer-form work for eight voices and live electronics, it interleaves sung movements with spoken interludes, the voices processed until they merge into something between human and machine. This is the register of Woolf's interludes, the sea and sky indifferent beneath the human drama, and evidence that I sustain long-form work in this medium.