I recently wrote and recorded the music for 3 short modern dance pieces that were performed as interludes to the latest Public Assembly show, “Heat Wave.” I had a lot of fun with this one, trying to make the pieces feel like heat. The buzzing of summer cicadas that starts each piece; synths and samples processed through sun-warped tape effects; woozy slide licks running through layers of vibrato and chorus pedals as though even the guitars had been sapped of energy and could barely stand upright in the heat.

I also took inspiration from 2 quite disparate musical sources, classical composer Edvard Grieg and koto innovator Michio Miyagi. Listen closely for samples of Michio’s old RCA recordings from the turn of the 20th century that I took and chopped up against heavy breakbeats. Used even more abstractly, I took Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor and reversed, time-streched, pitch-shifted, distorted, delayed and just generally mangled it into the undulating ambient waves that make up much of ACT II, first mellow and inviting, eventually growing to the doomy sludge that overwhelms the piece.

Even more rewarding than recording the piece itself though, was watching it danced to. I’ve never had the pleasure of having a piece of mine choreographed, and seeing the dancers bring it to life on the night of the performance was surreal and thrilling. Definitely something I hope to do again.

I put a playlist of the dance score below along with a few photos of the dance being performed so you can get a taste of the event. Big, huge fuckin ups to my collaborators on this: writer/director Clara Aranovich, choreographer/lead dancer Marlon Pelayo and dancers Bridget Scheiner & Jakob Olivier Scott. Thanks as well to Shawheen Keyani for the wonderful photos of the night.