See/Hear

Micah Fletcher

On May 26, 2017, three passengers on Portland's MAX train approached Jeremy Christian, a white nationalist who was verbally assaulting two Muslim women. The knife-wielding Christian brutally assaulted and killed Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Rick Best, and critically injuring Micah Fletcher. This attack set off shock waves across the country, perpetrated by an attacker who later claimed to be “agitated by the political polarization in the country.” Mr. Fletcher has received wide acclaim for his poetry, which describes his harrowing journey to recover from this assault.

Kenji Bunch

Kenji Bunch represents his hometown of Portland, Oregon as “one of the leading American composers of his generation, best known for amalgamating traditional American musical forms.” (Oregon ArtsWatch) While conservatory trained at The Juilliard School, Bunch infuses his music with folk and roots influences achieving an authentic and seamless blend of classical and vernacular styles. “Clearly modern but deeply respectful of tradition and instantly enjoyable,” (The Washington Post) his music has inspired a new genre classification. “Call it neo-American: casual on the outside, complex underneath, immediate and accessible to first-time listeners… Bunch’s music is shiningly original.” (The Oregonian) Deeply sensitive to history, philosophy, and the ways in which the arts are shared intergenerationally and cross-culturally, Bunch incorporates a variety of world music style references which aptly mirror the diversity of international influence on modern American society. Sly, irresistible grooves pepper his work, revealing a deft ability to integrate bluegrass, hip hop, jazz, and funk idioms. His rich, tonal harmonies and drawn-out, satisfying builds have wide emotive appeal that easily lend themselves to dance and film. Over sixty American orchestras have performed Bunch’s music, which “reache(s) into every section of the orchestra to create an intriguing mixture of sonic colors.” (NW Reverb) Recent works include commissions and premieres from the Seattle Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, the Lark Quartet, the Britt Festival, Music From Angel Fire, Chamber Music Northwest, the Eugene Ballet, and the Grant Park Music Festival. His extensive discography includes recordings on Sony/BMG, EMI Classics, Koch, RCA, and Naxos labels among others. Also an outstanding violist, Bunch received both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in viola and composition from the Juilliard School and was a founding member of the highly acclaimed ensembles Flux Quartet (1996-2002) and Ne(x)tworks (2003-2011). Bunch currently serves as Artistic Director of Fear No Music, and teaches viola, composition, and music theory at Portland State University, Reed College, and for the Portland Youth Philharmonic.

This work draws inspiration from two seemingly disparate but somewhat related sources: Micah Fletcher’s poem “False Idols,” written as part of a cycle dealing with his personal experience in the horrific MAX train attack of 2017, and the early 17th century Echo Sonata for three violins and continuo, by Biagio Marini.

Micah’s poem is emotionally searing, and insists on unvarnished authenticity at the expense of the convenient storytelling we’ve been conditioned to crave as consumers of media. He sees bitter irony in the tidiness of reported narratives of that incident- accounts that can’t possibly accommodate the complexities present in that awful moment, so they become, in effect, illusions. Marini’s innovative work features a solo violin onstage, accompanied by two other “echoing” violins offstage, creating the illusion of one supernatural instrument.

I call my piece Folie à deux, a term used by psychologists to describe a “shared delusion” between two or more people closely associated with each other. It is scored for solo violin with two additional offstage violins who do their best to “capture” parts of the solo part, but are inevitably at the mercy of their limited perspectives and memories. The three parts have intentionally conflicting information, celebrating the fragile poetic fallacy of our attempts to capture the truth.