Afternoon at Abuelita’s (2016)

I was invited to make a piece for a Soundspace at the Blanton Museum of Art, and decided to make this one for audience participation. The piece is performed by audience members playing one of four prepared tracks (from their phones or on boomboxes), creating a shifting soundscape as people walk through the gallery. Thinking a lot about the women in my family at the time, I combined old recordings of some of us in the kitchen at Abuelita’s house with some of my favorite sounds: prepared piano and gong chimes from a Javanese gamelan.

Duration: 10:00

Instrumentation: audience members playing one of four prepared tracks