Maps (of Friendship)
Performed by andPlay at Areté in Brooklyn, April 2019.
Maps (of Friendship), for violin, viola, and video was inspired by the beautiful friendship and busy lives of the two members of andPlay, Maya Bennardo and Hannah Levinson. It is also a creative sonification and visualization of their mostly-real travel times on different modes of transportation in New York City and Sweden. The intersections of time, convenience, comfort, cost, relationships, and values shape our decisions about how far is too far to travel for any particular thing, and these decisions are not only personal, but greatly impacted by infrastructure, weather, and other chaotic factors. This piece expresses the complex emotions and diverse experiences of time we encounter in transit. Maps (of Friendship) was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.