🎼 Aftermath
Emily Sheppard (b.1993) (composed 2016) arr. Van Diemen's Fiddles (2022)
Performed LIVE at Rosny Barn, Tasmania.
March 2023
Van Diemen's Fiddles
Julia Fredersdorff - Artistic Director/Baroque Violin/Voice
Rachel Meyers - Octave Violin/Voice
Emily Sheppard - Scordatura Viola/Voice
About this piece:
takayna ashes -
on the sand
two speckled eggs
one cracked open
inside
a tiny, wet mass
shivers
Aftermath was written during time spent in Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine after the 2016 bushfires that burnt large areas of rainforest in the northwest coast. I was walking along a beach at Sarah Anne Rocks, where the vegetation had been thoroughly burnt right up to the coast.
Amongst the blackness, I saw two speckled eggs on the sand. As I pondered the vulnerability of these tiny, exposed eggs, one of them hatched right before my eyes, revealing a shivering baby hooded plover. It was in this place between devastated landscape and fragile new life that I wrote this piece. Dedicated to the fire-fighters, many volunteer, who risk their lives to fight these increasingly frequent and large bushfires.
Aftermath is written for viola and voice to be performed by one person. It features scordatura viola, retuned to B, G, D, F#
- Emily Sheppard
🎥 Film by Caleb Miller Mac40Media
© Van Diemen's Band
