Industry (1992)

When I wrote Industry in 1992, I was thinking about the Industrial Revolution, technology, how instruments are tools and how industry has crept up on us and is all of a sudden overwhelming. I had this vision of a 100-foot ’cello made out of steel suspended from the sky, a ’cello the size of a football field, and, in the piece, the ’cello becomes a hugely distorted sound. I wrote this piece for Maya Beiser, and it was an incredible process. I would fax her the music and she'd play it to me over the phone. We did this maybe ten times, trying things out. She was constantly teaching me about the ’cello, and I was making her play things that were really awkward and dark.