Immersion (2014)

To purchase the score and performance materials, please get in touch.

Instrumentation: soprano, and piano

Duration: 6 minutes

World Premiere: April 7, 2014, Kristin Sampson (soprano), Charity Wicks (piano), American Opera Projects, Brooklyn, NY

Other performances:
May 21, 2017, Jamie Jordan (soprano), David Broome (piano), Queens New Music Festival, Queens, NY

Composer Note:
Immersion for soprano and piano is a setting of a text  from Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is the Bomb.

IMMERSION / Nick Flynn
Swim until the world becomes water, swim to the center of the pool, practice hanging, practice drowning, raise your arms above your head, let your body sink. Think of it as practice for when they come – there is only so much they can do with your body. Swim to the ladder, hang from it as you catch your breath, let your arms hang behind you like wings, then sink slowly into the water – your arms will raise to shoulder height behind you, to your ears, any farther and they will dislocate. No one is forcing you to do this, you do it because you have heard that it is done to others. Sink farther and you will sign the confession, you will give names, you will say whatever they tell you to say. But when they check your story, it will be water, it will slip through their hands. On the confession you will have signed the name “bird,” because that’s what you think of, hanging there with your arms behind you. All living things have shoulders, you think, hanging there.