Sirens and Silences (2020) - composed by Fay Victor

SIRENS & SILENCES For Cello, Clarinet, Trombone & Violin

Sirens & Silences (2020) is a memory document composition composed by Fay Victor and created to represent a specific place, space and time. April-May 2020 to be exact, when New York City was the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, the global ground zero for the nascent pandemic. The city went into lockdown or ‘pause’ on March 20, 2020, New Yorkers did what we always do - we hunkered down for the common good. Some fled the city but most of us stayed inside to stem the tide of this new NEW malaise that swooped in and found many of us helpless. 

We stayed inside. 

Many of us died. 

So the quiet was deafening, punctuated for days only by the sound of sirens. Far and near. On repeat. 

SIRENS & Silences was commissioned by the Jazz Coalition, presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY in May 2022.

The Players:

Mariel Roberts - violin, 

Marika Hughes - cello, 

Kalia Vandever - trombone, 

Patrick Holmes - clarinet. 

Fay Victor, conducting