Mikel Kuehn - Works

Entanglements (for harp and guitar, 2016)

Program Note

Entanglements (2016 for harp and guitar) was commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) for the Mostly Mozart Micro Commissions at Lincoln Center. The title was inspired by two concepts: The first is the way in which earbud headphone wires inevitably entangle which gave rise to analogues of this with the two string instruments. The second is a transposition of Einstein's “spooky action at a distance” concept from quantum mechanics to the idea of making a series of musical “states/characters” for each instrument, which are combined/collided in all possible ways throughout the piece but are also influential on each other. The premiere took place on July 29, 2016 with the performers it was written for: Nuiko Wadden, harp and Daniel Lippel, guitar.