Program Note

Assembly Line Apparitions is a work where the electronics are made entirely from recordings of a solo cello. All sounds were recorded in a session with a cellist, then edited, processed, and arranged into a fixed audio track alongside composed sheet music. There are a few “free-time” sections in the score where the cellist then listens back to the transformed material and improvises on those ideas, forming an assembly line-like feedback loop.

The title refers to two things: the repetitive, mechanical groove that drives the piece, and the step-by-step process of transforming acoustic recordings into electronic material and then back to acoustic. Like an assembly line, the piece was built in stages—from performance, to editing, to recombination.

Structurally, this piece mimics a factory shift. The music moves between tightly looped rhythmic cells and more abstract textures. The middle section breaks away from the groove into sustained tones and metallic effects, before returning to a denser, more distorted version of the opening material.

Overall, every electronic sound is derived from the instrument source, and paradoxically all acoustic live playing can be blended and derived from the electronic source.