October 11, 2020
Buzz flies into fall! Check out the new recording.

Buzz is the newest addition to Victoria Bond's works and surely the most unusual! It is a duet for insects and electric viola. Composed for violist Martha Mooke, Bond used the sounds of tree-hopper insects provided by biologist Rex Cocroft and combined them in a suite of five duets.

One of the things that strike me in particular about the insect sounds is that they are so unexpectedly expressive. In the past I had thought of insects as being creatures without true emotions, but these “songs” are deeply emotional. Maybe it’s just anthropomorphic to identify human emotions with those of insects, but I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is what I am really after with the piece – bringing out what is most expressive in the language of these beasts. I have not manipulated the sounds in any way, being averse to making them sound even more “strange” and exotic than they already are. The commentary on the viola is a dialogue, a conversation suggesting a reaction to those emotions.
VB

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