Life Is Flashing Before My Eyes and I Realize That It All Started With a Blackbird (LHS)

Winner of the 6th Composition Contest for the 2018 11th USA International Harp Competition

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“As an artist, my highest goal is to compose and perform new music for the harp that appeals to a broader audience, develop the possibilities of this amazing instrument, and tell musical stories through my compositions.  I usually compose more rhythmical parts using the percussive elements of the instrument, but in this piece I rather embraced the resonance and the ringing sound of the harp.  The piece La Volière Magique by Marcel Tournier was a big inspiration for this composition and led to asking myself, how would I write music abut a magical aviary?  What are the feelings from the birds captured inside – magical and beautiful?  There is something about this duplicity that you find everywhere in this world: the captured and the free, the natural and artificial, life and death.  The inner battle of one’s duplicity is what I have wanted to explore in this composition.  When I perform this piece, I have my own personal story behind the music.  I hope each harpist will present their own personal story through their interpretation of Life is flashing before my eyes and I realize that it all started with a blackbird.”  Uno Alexander Vesje

This piece is intended to be performed with the following audio file:

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