The vanishing point
soprano, stroh violin, trombone, live electronics
2025
duration: 4' 30"
The vanishing point was written for Isabel Xu, Mira Steenbrugge, and Jess Bull Anderson for the RCM Contemporary Music in Action Project 2025.
Performed here by Isabel Xu, Mira Steenbrugge, and Jess Bull Anderson
text: connect, in being for Pearl Martin by Jess Bull Anderson (b.2002)
shadows cast soon brushed aside
breathe here, held,
the wholeness of the circle
follow these lines within
the vanishing point to the angels -
planes of connection, transcending.
let the straggled hair of the sun fall,
weaving, once a woven;
brushed cloth drawn across -
lifted and draped by god.
The text for The vanishing point was written specially for this piece and collaboration between the original performers and me.
Me and Jess connected over our shared love for visual art, poetry, and our similar takes on contemporary classical music. After Jess shared a personal spiritual experience and a painting she had been in the process of creating, I asked her if I could create an additional dimension to the painting by creating music inspired by it. Of course, with the instrumentation including a soprano, I also knew I wanted to ask Jess if she would also write the text for this piece, effectively creating a multi-discipline installation of sorts with each component (painting, text, and music) each being separate whilst also being brought together in their mutual creation.
A big part of my own process in writing The vanishing point was the awareness of my performer’s capabilities. The trombone and violin were quite explicitly written with loose instructions or guidelines made to be broken and improvised freely over if they so desire.
In the original painting, there are 4 core colour components represented by the 4 performers of this piece. The trombone represents the orange energy/background, the violin represents the deep blue halo, the electronics representing the pale clouds, and the voice representing the yellow burst – the vanishing point.
© 2025 Thomas Shorthouse
