A Sonic Portrait
By Annie Nikunen
I recommend reading the descriptions beneath each track before listening to them.
This portfolio is conceived as a portrait of breakthroughs—works that mark decisive “aha” moments in my compositional journey. Because composing is a constant state of becoming, I chose not to present an uncoordinated list of pieces, but rather a curated sequence that reflects turning points: moments when my artistic language clarified, expanded, or fundamentally shifted.
The works span large-scale visions (Bloom, The Sound of Space Between Us), music born from embodied practice and performance (All Mass Is Interaction), collaborative authorship (Side A of my first co-composed album), and self-directed explorations in electronics (Ascending Pendulum). Together, they form a composite self-portrait, revealing not just what I make, but how and why I make it.
I’ve had directorial visions for all of them.
For optional viewing:
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Suggested excerpt: 4:44 to 8:04
Score (pg.11, m.120 to
My time as a Composition Fellow at Tanglewood changed my life, marking a profound turning point: I realized I needed to write what I wanted to hear, rather than contorting my work to meet external expectations. I submitted a portfolio that reflected the full range of my practice, and for the first time felt deeply celebrated for being myself. Bloom, commissioned by Tanglewood, emerged directly from this epiphany and remains the piece that feels most fully “me.” I see it as a blossoming of myself as much as the flowers I wrote about.
Written in just a few weeks, Bloom grew not from a grand conceptual premise, but from something deceptively simple and personal: my daily walks through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I kept trying to wait for this huge magnum-opus-worthy idea, but I discovered that my most resonant work could arise from ordinary sources of joy. The work’s long ascension—particularly the passage beginning around 6:45 and culminating in a vast release of air—especially embodies this sense of blossoming, both musical and personal.
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Suggested excerpt: 6:00 to 8:08; 1:40 to 3:04; 4:30 to 5:32
Score (mm. 126-166; mm. 36-69; mm. 97-117)
In all mass is interaction, I sought to express physical movement solely through sound. The piece emerged from choreographing and dancing in the studio, then translating those embodied gestures into rhythmic cells, phrasing, and long arcs of motion. Written for my time at Tanglewood, it marked a departure from the slower music that had previously dominated my work, opening onto a more active, sparkly musical language.
I found a particular joy in riding the solo flute line atop a shimmering string texture—a balance of propulsion and suspension. Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet, a work I have choreographed to for several years, was a significant influence on my thinking about texture and time. I also realized I had written a technically demanding flute part that felt both virtuosic and deeply natural to perform.
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Suggested excerpt: 1:51 to 4:10
Score
our breaths in partnered sleep was born from a late-night idea while mourning the loss of someone who once slept beside me. The following day, I rented a studio, called up a violinist friend, and began filming—working intuitively from grief, memory, and physical sensation.
The piece explores intimacy through embodiment: the composer and performer function simultaneously as sound sources and movers, while the solo violin assumes an orchestral role. Filmed aerially with two pillows placed on the floor, the work centers on the absence and ephemerality of the relationship between two spaces in a bed; a most private and vulnerable place. Through choreographic prompts, the violinist and I move with, around, and against the empty space beside us.
Drawing on my background in ballet and movement-based performance, I sought to reimagine “partnering” not through physical contact, but through memory. The music expands and contracts with breathing patterns, treating synchronized respiration during sleep as a quiet, intimate form of duet—partnering through presence, memory, and shared rhythm.
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Suggested excerpt: 0:39 to 4:05
Ascending Pendulum reflects my growing interest in short-form, cinematic, and song-adjacent composition. The piece began from a directorial impulse: I imagined a solitary figure in a dark apartment, moving through psychological turmoil—memory flickering between joy and devastation. As with much of my work, I often compose in reverse, first envisioning scenes or movements and then writing music to inhabit them.
Created independently and from scratch, this piece also represents my evolving relationship with electronics as a kind of partner dance—an exploration of movement and sound mediated through Ableton, discovering new modes of responsiveness and intimacy between body, technology, and emotional narrative.goes here
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Suggested excerpt: 6:16 to 10:30
This is Side A of my first co-composed album with composer, guitarist, and recording engineer Matt Sargent, a collaboration we have been developing over nearly five years. It is primarily based on improvisatory material around chords we notated. The project emerged from a shared pursuit of an abstract emotional state—one we could sense clearly in its impact, but not yet in its sonic form. Much of the process involved circling that feeling, trusting it, and waiting for the precise sounds to reveal themselves.
I carry a mental catalogue of moments when music has struck me with that initial rush of “I need to hear that again”: through headphones, in a concert hall, on the radio station as a DJ, or in the dance studio. Occasionally, through patience and collaboration, we are able to capture that sensation ourselves. This album represents one of those rare instances—an attempt to make audible the elusive experiences that first drew us to music.
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Suggested excerpt:
Score:
The Sound of Space Between Us for orchestra is the final installment of a trilogy exploring connection across distance, time, and even death—abstracted emotional and spatial relationships that can be applied to anyone. Each version—for multi-tracked solo violin, string quartet, and orchestra—shares a common sonic DNA while expanding in scale, structure, and narrative complexity. The entire project originated from a four-measure theme, which becomes a constant presence amid shifting musical environments.
Across the trilogy, a solo violin functions as a persistent voice—suggestive of an inner self navigating a changing body, circumstances, and emotional landscapes. In the orchestral version, this idea expands into embedded duos at multiple scales (violin and orchestra, flute and orchestra, piano and harp), abstracting relationships between two individuals into layered musical systems. Distance, absence, and memory shape how sound and movement interact, where gestures and sonic events are choreographed to embody psychological and physical phenomena.