A (Real and Imagined) Map of Claire Chase (2019) is a work for solo bass flute which is made anew at each performance. The music is a tracing over of Claire’s sound memories, in the way a palimpsest is superimposed and catches on previously erased elements of parchment. Scored in map-form, the musical fragments follow the side roads, streams and passing breezes of Claire’s musical, acoustic and life experiences. There are brief signals – a bird, a breath, a grounding tone that lead into other musical memories and rituals indelibly etched into the body. Folk song duets played with Claire’s brother are intertwined with adolescent tussles with my sister, and the performance becomes a portrait of us both, and of itself.
Review from Limelight Magazine by Clive Paget…
“Last but not least, Bree van Reyk pushed the performing envelope on step further with her ingenious A (Real and Imagined) Map of Claire Chase. Taking as its starting point Chase’s own life experience and especially her early memories of sound, the work was written in fragmentary form, some sections placed lying on the floor, others handed out to audience members to hold up if and when Chase approached them. By allowing different sections to be played as the mood takes the soloist – a reflection of Chase’s embrace of irregular daily practise routines – van Reyk ensures that no two performances will ever be the same. Written for the sonorous bass flute, the work involved blowing into the instrument not only with the lips but also with the mouth an inch or so distant from the mouthpiece, even calling for passages of whistling at times. Chase ran the gamut from funky to cool, at one point crouching face to face with a man in the audience as she negotiated a complex, crazily energetic passage.”