Chronos (2025)
for Vibraphone and Electronics

Chronos is a meditation on how time is felt and it explores the elasticity of temporal perception through the interplay of live vibraphone and spatialized electronics.  When the music is more sparse, time appears to decelerate; when patterns become more intricate or dense, time seems to accelerate.  This malleability is enhanced by the electronic component, which consists of delayed, transformed, and spatialized echoes of the vibraphone’s earlier material. These electronic reflections serve as sonic and musical memories. The piece invites the listener to experience duration not as a fixed measure but as a subjective phenomenon shaped by attention, memory, and sonic context and Listeners are encouraged to move between different sonic focal points. The spatialized electronics are designed to transform the space, allowing each listener to choose their own center of focus and their own perceived speed of time’s passage.

The melodic and rhythmic structures of the piece are algorithmically generated through experimentation with the Recursive Granular Synthesis (RGS) system. The goal is to mimic the avazi form in the Persian Radif. Evolved around the poetic structures of Persian poetry, the Radif is a collection of highly ornamented monophonic melodic patterns that are often performed free of strict rhythmic structure; however, for a performance to be effective, an intricate poetic rhythmic sensibility must be maintained. Chronos, beginning with its first phrase, establishes this sensitivity. Even though on the surface the melodic material may seem to be in a fantasy form, the canonical form (implemented by Lila electronic instrument) imposes a highly strict rhythmic constraint, which requires extreme precision from the performer.

Premiered by Aiyun Huang at the Banff Center for the Arts July 2055