“Rusalka” will be composed as a cycle of songs borrowing symphonic tone poem sensibilities

scored for solo soprano voice, piano, and electronic and sampled fixed media sounds to be realized within an immersive audio high-density speaker array environment. While the songs will characterize beings from Slavic folklore manifesting sea nymphs, mermaids, and sirens such as Rusalka, Mavka, Kostromo, and Kupalo, for example, these entities will interrupt each other as extended phasing leitmotifs orchestrated for the piano and fixed media in conjunction with the soloists’ portrayals of a distraught individual influenced by a combination of a fictional metamorphosis and actualized dissociative identity disorder.

This will be a deeply personal work forging a love and appreciation for the power of familiarity in folk melodies, a desire to explore influences from the many qualities encompassed within the works by the great Alexander Scriabin, and new concepts for merging electroacoustic sounds with the aforementioned.