Annie Nikunen - A Sonic Portrait

I recommend reading each description of the pieces below before listening.

This portfolio represents a range of my work, and what I think of as a portrait of breakthroughs. Since composing is a constant development state of mind, I wanted to make a portfolio that’s all about these “aha” moments, that define and shift pathways forward. Rather than just present an uncoordinated list of my best work, I wanted to present a series of works that show different sides of me, and a mix of moments: feats I’m really proud of that were dream visions come to life and my biggest orchestrations to date (Bloom and The Sound of Space Between Us) and pieces I loved performing myself (side A of my first co-composed album with Matt Sargent, all mass in a chamber context with my home ensemble, and Ascending Pendulum exploring electronics on my own from scratch, discovering a different kind of partner dance moving sound with my Ableton Move).

My Composition Fellowship at Tanglewood really changed my life, and made me realize I had to write what I wanted to, and not what anyone else wanted me to. I felt celebrated for being me, as all I submitted was 10 pieces of my work showing all my different things I do. I stopped conforming myself to others’ expectations and started honing my own. Commissioned by Tanglewood, I see Bloom as a blossoming - literally - of this epiphany, and it is the work I hear as most myself. It’s interesting how hard it is to capture oneself in sound, in a way that really hits - sometimes it’s just captured perfectly, like a really good photograph where everything just happened to align. I wrote it in just a few weeks, going with an everyday inspiration: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, very close to where I live. I kept trying to wait for this huge magnum-opus-worthy idea, but the lesson here was my favorite piece I’ve written grew from something super simple that I just purely love in my everyday life, that gives me so much joy. I have so many directorial visions for the ascension starting at 6:45, ending with that ginormous crescendo into air around 7:20. I see a trailer for me dancing to this at BBG, with brass lining the Cherry Esplanade and me looking into the camera on a close shot, then running away and through the brass.

With all mass is interaction, I found a way to express movement solely through sound, after choreographing and dancing in the studio from which I extracted rhythms and phrases and long lines. Up until this point I had written mainly slower music, so this sparkly, active creation written for my time at Tanglewood was something I felt I finally found my voice in. I love riding the wave of the solo flute part on top of the bed of strings. I was really inspired by Feldman in this kind of texture, particularly Piano and String Quartet, which I’ve been developing dance to for five years. I was like wow, I wrote a pretty hard flute part! :)

Ascending Pendulum represents something I’ve been playing with more lately, more short-form/songwriting/film track - style works. It was born from my directorial tendencies and interests, imagining a film scene with it: someone going through something psychologically challenging alone in a dark apartment, missing someone and getting flashbacks of memories, from the most joyous to the most devastating. I often do things in reverse: similar to how I choreograph and then write music to those movements, I often imagine film scenes in my head and then score to them.

The Sound of Space Between Us for orchestra (2023/24) is the third and final installment of The Sound of Space Between Us trilogy, imagining the sound of connection between two people spanning life, distance, and even death—abstracted emotional and spatial relationships that can be applied to anyone. Here, distance, absence, and memory inform how music and movement coalesce into a living system, where gestures and sonic events are choreographed to embody psychological and physical phenomena. The three installments - for multi-tracked solo violin, string quartet, and orchestra - are all sonically reminiscent of one another, but evolve in instrumentation, structure, narrative and movement. It all started with a 4-measure theme. They expand around the constant solo violin role, or present voice, like someone’s core amidst a changing body, mind and circumstances around them. This final installment consists of embedded duos on various scales - flute and orchestra, violin and orchestra, piano and harp, etc. - representing those two aforementioned people.

our breaths in partnered sleep (dance film) was born from a 2am dance film idea I had when mourning the loss of someone who slept beside me. It was rather impulsive - I rented a studio the next day in the village, calling up my violinist friend, saying “I have an idea.” She was thankfully game, and we went to the studio and started taking video of what I imagined, aerial shots of us on two pillows on the floor, dancing within and around them. I wanted to explore this deep intimacy in a piece where the composer and performer embody all areas of the work -sound sources as movers - as well as a solo violin being an orchestra. The violinist and I represent two different experiences with the relationship between two spaces in a bed; a most private and vulnerable place. We fade in and out of moving with/around/against our absent space adjacent based on prompts for each cell in the choreography section of the score. As a trained ballet dancer who turned to exploring movement art, I wanted to challenge what “partnering” could be. I wanted the music to breathe, expressing two people’s breathing patterns syncing in sleep as a form of “partnering”, breathing together in “partnered sleep”.