Bang on a Can

After the Russian Revolution, there was a period where Russian composers tried to make pieces that sounded like factory sounds. When I wrote Industry in 1993, I was thinking about the Industrial Revolution, technology, how instruments are tools and how industry has crept up on us and is all of a sudden overwhelming. I had this vision of a 100-foot cello made out of steel suspended from the sky, a cello the size of a football field, and, in the piece, the cello becomes a hugely distorted sound. I wrote it specifically for Maya, and it was an incredible process. I would fax her the music and she'd play it to me over the phone. We did this maybe ten times, trying things out. She was constantly teaching me about the cello, and I was making her play things that were really awkward and dark. The fact that the piece is difficult to play is an understatement.