Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
‘Droid: New Music for Flute and Guitar’
Hinck composition premieres tonight
The flute-guitar instrumentation of “Droid: New Music for Flute and Guitar” calls to mind pastoral serenity, while the title might evoke images of Star Wars’ C-3PO and R2-D2’s beeps and whistles.
“The piece definitely plays off that slightly confusing, amusing dichotomy of high-tech title and pastoral sound,” says composer Tim Hinck.
“My thought was basically to go back to the real entomology of droid, which is short for android, which is a sci-fi experiment of replicating human experience that is now coming into the realm of possibility. An android is basically an artwork that is trying to re-create and define what it means to be human. In replicating human characteristics you are also defining what it means to be human. I find that really interesting.
“That’s what the core of the piece is about. It’s not so much fixating on the technology of what an android might be as it is the reality of the humanity it is copying.”
“Droid: New Music for Flute and Guitar” will highlight a concert tonight, Nov. 29, hosted by Guitar-Chattanooga at Barking Legs Theater. The program of music from the 20th and 21st centuries is for classical guitar and musicians. Those instrumentalists will include Michael McCallie, Mary Neel, Alejandro Olson, Bryony Stroud-Watson, Hinck and Kayoko Dan.
McCallie and Dan will perform Hink’s piece.
“Droid” is the fourth in a series of original pieces that Hinck has been commissioned to write over the last year. Hinck calls the series Terraform.
“Terraform is a sci- fi term as well,” says Hinck. “A term for trying to re-create a habitable Earth-like place in another world. I’m not a big sci-fi fan, I read some growing up. I’m coming at this more in the interest of human experience than sci-fi. I’m drawn to it not from the technology standpoint, but the human, the artist’s, standpoint.”
The first commission in Terraform was a work for soprano and mixed ensemble that he called “Terraform 1: Brook.” “Terraform II: Sandstone” was for solo pianist. “Terraform III: Four thirty-four Buehler’s Market” premiered at Juilliard School in New York.
McCallie and Dan, Chattanooga Symphony & Opera conductor who also plays flute, will perform “Terraform IV: Droid.” Hinck says the work has five movements, but they flow so seamlessly into each other that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.