POR JACK GALLAHAN
[…] During the performance I felt that del Pino was constantly in conversation with Cóccaro. In the first part of the piece, the solo soprano intones Cóccaro’s text as a one-pitch melody — a musical axis around which pre-recorded voices orbit, singing the lines “the sea shifts like / thought / like thoughts / when you think under water” in ever-changing rhythmic and harmonic combinations. This compositional juxtaposition of an individual against a shifting background resonated powerfully with the text. Indeed, in the poem, a nameless identity reflects repeatedly on the act of writing, as in the beautiful lines “to write in the end is to wait / to see a likeness / between a brain and the top of a tree.” Alongside this thread is a vivid evocation of the passage of time as a continual process of renewal: “in all things there is water / all the time the sea / that is always beginning.” In the second half of the composition, the soprano abandons her one-pitch melody, sinking into the texture of the pre-recorded voices — a self dissolved in the hypnotic peace of an eternally shifting sea.