Rail Dynamics

This work was premiered at The TANK Center for the Sonic Arts on September 22, 2024 by Jordan Grantonic (violin), Emma Reynolds (viola), and Peyton Magalhaes (cello). The TANK is well known for its uniquely intense acoustic resonance, in which sounds can last up to 50 seconds before fading away. More information about the TANK can be found here: tanksounds.org/

Rail Dynamics is a multi-movement work for string trio and fixed media inspired by a defunct rail line outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Across its ten movements, Rail Dynamics explores the soundscapes of the northern New Mexican landscape while navigating the cultural and environmental impact of the rail in the Galisteo Basin, ultimately meditating on the slow deterioration of the rail line and the surrounding landscape's gradual reclamation of its previously inhabited spaces.

Intertwined among these explorations are images surrounding a car accident I was in as a child that involved a collision with a train. The accident had long faded into distant memory by the time I first encountered the abandoned rail while exploring the desert, but it still haunted me on a daily basis (survivor's guilt, nightmares, seemingly random associations). Being by the rail and in the deep quiet that characterizes so much of northern New Mexico's landscapes, however, helped me to recontextualize my experience and facilitated my recovery; the slow dissolution of the rail into the high desert soil seemed to mirror the gradual vanishing of the scars on my face, and in a strange way I found a deep kinship with the basin, what remained of the rail, and their deeply nuanced relationship.

This piece is dedicated to my father, who, for weeks following the accident, would fall asleep at the foot of my hospital bed without mattress or pillow so I would not be there by myself.

(Rail Dynamics takes its name from a ground-breaking set of mid-century field recordings of locomotives in New York, championed today by the Smithsonian Folkways. The original Rail Dynamics can be found on Spotify and YouTube). Also, X. Shivers is an homage to 2019 video game Disco Elysium (the homage note got caught off when I exported the video).

I. Petrichor 00:00
II. Clearing 04:51
III. Hollow 08:03
IV. Whistle 10:55
V. Nocturne 13:24
VI. Sleeping Figure 17:04
VII. Petrichor (Revisited) 26:20
VIII. Imprint 29:47
IX. Four Dreamscapes 34:11
X. Shivers (homage to Disco Elysium) 36:20