Scar (Triptych II) (2019)
(for 15 soloists and conductor )

scar /skɑː/

              n.           1. The fibrous connective tissue remaining on the skin or within body tissue, where a wound, burn, or sore has healed. 2. A steep high cliff or rocky eminence.

              v.           trans. Mark with a scar or scars; to do lasting injury to. intrans. To become scarred.

                            ME skere, ON sker, skera, OF escharre, GK eskhara 

Scar: stigma, cicatrix, lesion, naevus, trauma, pock and pit - marred, a mark of difference.
Memory, history, ingrained on the skin:
tracing a possible wound.
The implication of violence, disfigured and defaced.
The imperfect surface, frayed edges, cracks in the veneer. 

Silence is the canvas on which the weight of sound leaves it´s mark.
In Scar sound rips open the surface of silence, or peels back the skin, zooms in, and fall into the netherworld.
Seeking the obscured, that which lies within. 

" This corporal revenge. A genuine, concerted and systematic undoing of grace. Every promise discovered too late to be a fucking lie told badly. The promise of intimacy and the promise of beauty ripped away to reveal a gawping, hyperreal brute. Perfection only withheld by that small matter of the encroaching white of dawn under the door and the imminent waking. When all of this might be nonchalantly buried studded into the underwear draw of language and a sprint of animist velocity...."

British artist, Ed Atkins, US DEAD TOLD LOVE, A primer for Cavaders,  Fitzcarraldo Publishers 

Rebecca Saunders, March 2019