SETLIST
forever – is composed of nows
Stef Van Vynckt | Das Haus, March 21, 2026
1 Nico Muhly: The Street |
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Forever – is composed of Nows –
by Emily Dickinson Forever – is composed of Nows – ‘Tis not a different time – Except for Infiniteness – And Latitude of Home – From this – experienced Here – Remove the Dates – to These – Let Months dissolve in further Months – And Years – exhale in Years – Without Debate – or Pause – Or Celebrated Days – No different Our Years would be From Anno Dominies – Forever — is composed of Nows -- is a solo project for harp and electronics exploring how we inhabit time, and how attention shapes experience.
Borrowing its title from Emily Dickinson, the project approaches “forever” not as transcendence, but as accumulation — a structure built from present moments. Duration becomes relational: something formed through shared listening, memory, and perceptual trace. The concept took shape during Stef Van Vynckt’s residency with Bang on a Can at MASS MoCA, including extended time spent inside James Turrell’s Skyspace C.A.V.U.. In Turrell’s environments, time loosens from productivity and narrative; subtle shifts in light demand sustained attention. This experience of suspended presence—of “almost nothing”—profoundly shaped the musical language of the project. Across the program, new works by among others Christopher Cerrone, Heleen Van Haegenborgh, John Supko form a coherent sonic environment in which acoustic and electronic sound operate as interdependent systems. Gestures recur altered. Resonances outlive their cause. Sound leaves afterimages. Rather than presenting a traditional recital, Forever — is composed of Nows -- creates a listening situation: a space in which time is stretched, folded, and felt through accumulation. The harp functions not as ornament, but as resonant body and interface—an instrument through which physical action, electronic mediation, and perception continuously interact. In an age of fragmented attention and constant acceleration, the project asks a simple question: what happens when we stay? When we listen long enough for sound to gather, rather than demand immediate resolution? |
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Nico Muhly: The Street (14 Meditations on the Stations of the Cross) Station I. Jesus is condemned to death Station IV. Jesus meets his Mother Station VII. Jesus falls for the second time Station XIII. Jesus is taken down from the Cross The Street is a musical exploration of the intense symbolism and emotional weight of the Stations of the Cross, with each of the fourteen movements possessing its own distinct character. In this work, the harp is not merely an instrument but also symbolizes the physical burden of the Stations of the Cross. Muhly describes the harp as a human presence, with each note and movement echoing the events of the Passion narrative. He portrays the harp as a being that is both vulnerable and powerful: its size, almost human-like, and the tension in its strings bring the suffering journey palpably close. Maja Bosnic: Vessels (160935km) for amplified harp Vessels (160935 km) various kinds of continuous flows of different speeds, densities, and textures, are perplexed. The work was inspired by a fusion of two ideas of continuous flows that define us: imagining blood cells running through vessels in a body, as well as a vehicle driving on the highway. Hence, the title relates to both concepts, it resembles a geographical road sign, but also specifies average length of blood vessels in an adult human body. - Maja Bosnic Heleen Van Haegenborgh: Fluo for Harp for harp and fixed media In Fluo for Harp, Heleen Van Haegenborgh combines the harp part with nippy electronics. A dynamic dialogue just below and just above the surface that sometimes complements, sometimes disrupts, or sometimes comments Philip Glass: Glassworks VI. Closing Closing is the final movement of Philip Glass's album Glassworks, released in 1982. Built on gently shifting harmonic patterns, the music unfolds with a sense of calm inevitability. Its repeating figures seem to suspend time. As the piece progresses, small variations accumulate, giving the impression of motion within stillness. The result is both intimate and expansive, offering a quiet resolution that feels less like a conclusion and more like a gradual fading into silence. “I’m very pleased with it, the way it’s received in performance. The pieces seem to have an emotional quality that everyone responds to, and they work very well as performance pieces.”- Philip Glass |
John Supko: Time Becomes Again for harp and tape The title "Time Becomes Again"—I still find it easy to misspeak—is a fragment plucked from the eighth couplet of Wallace Stevens’s famously di@icult poem “Description Without Place.” Although removed from their context, these words, like much of Stevens, rang a sympathetic bell deep within me. I sometimes find inventions of language that are compact but allusive enough to use as titles for pieces. "Time becomes again" serves marvelously well: three simple words that give a little fillip to the mind, suggesting a counterintuitive operation of language, if not reality. How indeed does time “become” at all, let alone "again"? [...] Time Becomes Again started life as a bit of electronic music generated by a software program I made. Being devoid of taste and inhibitions, computers can model the irrational potentialities of a musical present—not unlike the existential flicker of quantum particles—in wonderful ways. But this piece is more concerned with the experience of musical time than its technological origins. Its manner of speaking is gentle, perhaps the better to escape the guesswork of an analytical ear. I have never liked the idea that listeners could know in advance, however briefly, what a piece was about to do. It seems a misuse of the composer's omniscience—not to say omnipotence—in the universe of the composition. Omniscience is ultimately boring, however. The computer is the tool I use to surprise myself. As a result, this piece proceeds not through motivic fixation but by the cultivation of a mysterious sense of propulsion. The engine producing this propulsion is powered by little explosions of computational serendipity. Considering whether these flashes restart the clock of perception or only seem to brings us back to Stevens and the central preoccupation of his poem: "It is possible that to seem—it is to be, / As the sun is something seeming and it is."µ I am grateful to harpist Stef van Vynckt, who commissioned Time Becomes Again, and to whom it is warmly dedicated. - John Supko Christopher Cerrone: Swift Interval for harp and electronics I. Cactus Land II. A Blanker Whiteness III. No Detail Too Small The title comes from Jorie Graham's poem "Home": "the swift interval before evaporation, & the stillness of brimming." A live harp plays against four electronic copies of itself, each tuned slightly flat—one by roughly a sixth of a semitone, another by a quarter tone. These near-unisons create a persistent tension—swift because the distance is so small, brimming because the sound never quite settles. I looked for other writers circling similar states of irresolution—three poems that, like the movements they inspire, bleed into one another. I. Cactus Land draws from T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men. The movement is dominated by a "xylophonic" technique—striking the string while dampening it—a brittle, prickly sound, like touching a cactus needle. II. A Blanker Whiteness borrows from Robert Frost's "Desert Places." The music settles into a single diatonic field, white on white, where the subtle tuning differences between the live harp and its electronic shadows create something like depth perception—distance emerging from sameness. III. No Detail Too Small takes its name from Elizabeth Bishop's "Sandpiper." The finale exploits the harp's ability to play identical pitches on different strings, then multiplies this across all five harps, turning the smallest details into a kaleidoscopic blur. Swift Interval was commissioned by and dedicated to Stef Van Vynckt, who premiered the work on March 21, 2026 in Brussels. - Christopher Cerrone |