This Thursday (3/22/12) is the debut of a new piece for choreographer Catherine Cabeen at Velocity Dance here in Seattle by my myself and Ross Simonini. Ross and I have been working together under the moniker 'Nat and Roos' since 2006 doing scores for dance, a film score, and currently we're working on music that we'll release as an album and use for sound installations in galleries in the coming year.
    Ross lives in New York, but came out here last fall a couple days before his tour got under way with NewVillager. With a basic framework of ideas we spent two days recording ideas we had been discussing, improvisations, wandering the neighborhood collecting sounds and wondering what the hell we were doing sometimes but making new sounds anyway. We sent a whole heap of sounds off to Catherine Cabeen to get an idea of what she felt might fit her vision for the piece she was working on. After that, Ross did an initial assemblage of sounds and added some tweaked sounds, then I went in and added additional layers of percussion, a five-part falsetto choir, and some conch shell. We passed the track back and forth and kept checking in with Catherine until we felt like it was done, but only knew for certain when I went to a rehearsal a couple weeks ago and observed the incredible clarity and detail with which Catherine had perceived the music and the quartet that she had choreographed in response. It's an honor to be able to collaborate with both Ross and Catherine, and I highly recommend coming out to one of the shows this weekend. For more information on the shows at Velocity Dance click here, and to hear the music we wrote for the dance, see below.