Solo: harp - Night Loops (solo acoustic harp version)

These days, if I try to sleep while music is playing, I have an almost hallucinogenic experience: an obsessive looping of musical fragments that holds me in a suspended state between waking and dreaming. It’s strangely both passive and active, subconscious and conscious, and depending on my emotional state at the time the obsessive looping can become either nightmarishly claustrophobic or calming in a repeated mantra-like way.

This piece is an attempt to translate that experience: little minimalist fragments create hypnotic tapestries that don’t develop in a traditional sense, but rather warp, loop, and skip, lulling themselves to sleep or layering and layering to an anxious climax, until the next cycle begins.

The original version of this piece was written for Lavinia Meijer, to be recorded on her 2016 album The Glass Effect. It consists of many layers of individual harp lines, which were recorded and incorporated for live performance with an accompanying electronic track. It is arranged for solo acoustic harp in this version for Chelsea Lane, to be premiered at ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan, September 18-October 4, 2025.