Becoming (2003-4) 10' for twenty-four voices and amplification

This piece was premiered on Oct 9th, 2004, at Merkin Hall in New York City. It was commissioned by the foundation for Universal Sacred Music.

This piece is about mystical ecstasy, about the moment when all dissolves in the divine. It is not about the mysticism attached to any particular tradition, but rather it is a fantasy, an ecstatic ritual from a non-existent country, or it represents some kind of place where these different ecstatic experiences meet. The title, however, is a specific reference to Balinese ritual practice, in which ecstatic trance plays a very important part. I thought it was particularly beautiful that the Indonesian word for the act of going into trance - dadi - translates literally as "Becoming."