Miniatures by Aaron Rourk

“Can you play something, um, not so dramatic and, you know, jazzy?”
—George, 5 years old

A collection of miniature compositions made from reconfigured and manipulated improvisations.

These pieces draw from my personal archive of recorded sound, a diverse body that includes voice memos, song sketches, practice sessions, group rehearsals, synthesized play-alongs, digital mock-ups, field recordings… The majority of these recordings were originally conceived as placeholders for future projects; drafts to be fleshed out at some (undefined) point in the future, never intended to be presented to any kind of audience.

I have plunged into this archive, drawing out and juxtaposing sounds from different periods in my history as a maker of music. The pieces I have created are remixes, recompositions, reworks of this material - a kind of autobiography, a memoir. What you hear are handmade constructions, fabrications, weavings of sonic fragments from multiple points in time. They are memories, taken from their moment and spun together to create a new ideas, new thoughts, new feelings.

One young listener (3 years of age) described the sonic fingerprint of some of these pieces in reference to some important nouns: a thunderstorm, a tricycle, a chicken, bubbles. Where do they take you?

Aaron Rourk is a multi-instrumentalist composer-performer. He performs regularly in New York and elsewhere in a variety of constellations playing a collection of (primarily) woodwinds and electronics. His work is often entangled with other artistic mediums (such as dance, puppetry and theater) and community-based projects.

aaronrourk.com
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