Slow Emergencies

Instrumentation: solo piano

Duration: 5 minutes

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Slow Emergencies refers to climate-change related issues or disasters that are perceived as slow moving to our human perception. We understand that the melting of a glacier or the creation of a megadrought takes decades, but we rather quickly become desensitized to the process and the absence of the glacier or the presence of the drought becomes a "new normal." This movement, Drought as the New Normal, features two contrasting musical ideas, one rather quick and florid in the high register of the piano, and the other slow moving, regular, and in the lower register. The first idea represents the natural presence of water in the Southwestern United States, and the low register idea represents human draw from the limited water resource. As the piece progresses, the human draw becomes overwhelming, but the piece ends with the hope that we can make a correction and require less draw on our water resources for our future needs.