“silks” takes its name and inspiration from aerial silks, a type of acrobatic performance performed while hanging from a fabric. The discipline is elegant, expressive, and physically strenuous, requiring many hours of training to learn and master the climbs, wraps and drops.

This work was written for and dedicated to Cheryl Duvall, a pianist who has an avid interest in aerial silks. Duvall choreographed an aerial silks routine and filmed it, and for the process of composing, I mapped each movement to music. Each physical gesture – each climb, each wrap, each pose – has a corresponding musical gesture. The held poses are mapped to a series of chords, which were individually handpicked from my absolute favourite chords from Romantic/20th century piano literature (Brahms, Scriabin, Messiaen, Rachmaninoff, Poulenc).

“silks” was written for Cheryl Duvall, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.