HENNIES, SARAH - Motor Tapes

  "Sarah Hennies (b. 1979) is a composer and percussionist whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. The booklet for this, her second New World recording, features an extensive and wide-ranging conversation with the composer, wherein Hennies discusses her compositional practice and how these three pieces -- all in some way related to brain activity, specifically mood disorders and circadian rhythm -- represent an important step in the evolution of her work. '[T]hese works do signal a transformation. Up until Clock Dies, for instance, every piece I had written involved a stopwatch. But Talea Ensemble wanted a work with a conductor, and so Clock Dies was the first piece I made where I thought, 'Let's see if I can make chamber music.' So Clock Dies is through-composed; of course there's lots of repetition, there's a