Conceived as a composition of ‘solidarity’, Calliope Tsoupaki wrote Thin Air so it could travel the world. Written at the beginning of lockdown, it’s now on tour; performances of the solo work began in June, and are being delivered over the internet by festivals that have either been cancelled or reshaped in the wake of Covid-19. It’s linked by more than just a touring schedule; through the work of Festivals for Compassion, Thin Air has become a collection of archived performances, each drawn together in a timeline that celebrates the contemporary music community. As musicians, organisers and audiences, we’re often experiencing the same music, unknowingly sharing it as it moves from place to place. In a year where everything’s been moved to the same, intangible location, Thin Air uses differences to emphasise similarities, and marks the distance between us to strengthen our togetherness.
Thin Air has become a message in a bottle, making for the road at a time when we can’t. The piece’s journey started in June, with guitarist Wiek Hijmans interpreting the piece at an alternative version of Holland Festival. It has since been taken through the virtual versions of events in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, and will make, in due course, for performances ‘around the world’. Each performance has become its own spectacle; the notes of Thin Air have been passed on, but the settings, the inflections, and the timbres have changed. Each performer, with their own instrument, discovers what it’s like to play a concert from their newly remote corner of the world.
With physical performances largely off the table, Thin Air has imagined new ways to link us together. Cellist Maya Fridman gave an emphatic interpretation of the piece to a backdrop of ocean blue. Bauke Reitsma’s version for carillon resonated loudly through the local spots of Deventer that Deventer op Stelten would usually light up. Michele Marco Rossi took it to the rooftops; Zea, Peter Agbe-Carbonu and Solomon Bawa combined for a duo across the world. At hcmf// 2020, Mandhira de Saram will continue the timeline, performing Thin Air in its latest iteration as a violin piece.
In many ways, Thin Air is vintage Tsoupaki. Active as a composer since the late 80s, the Greek-Dutch pianist has spent years creating music characterised by gorgeous melodies, lamenting strands of ambience and the sounds of her native Greece. Weaving personal history through her work, she has never shirked from expressing herself; nor from having her feelings inferred just as they are. Though it may change per performance – become less warm in one concert, more rousing in another – Thin Air does what Tsoupaki has been doing with her music since her early years studying with Louis Andriessen. The piece is, in a word, unabashed – capturing the frustration, exuberance and anguish of the past six months, sharing those feelings generously.
She was chosen to compose Thin Air in her official capacity as ‘Composer of the Netherlands’, but Tsoupaki is also right for the role. Her work is clear, emotional and communicative, and it flows like there’s no tomorrow, moving seamlessly through movements with different tempos, drawing together language that at first felt disparate. Her 2013 piece Narcissus, an hour-long epic for piano, strings and horns, is crammed full of fallout and despair, built out of looping string attacks, tumbling piano lines and cliff-edge chords. Despite its half dozen segues, it holds together, never losing its ‘essence’ – a word Tsoupaki prides her work by.
It is this ability to carry sound that has established interconnectivity between each Thin Air. The piece feels like it has begun somewhere, and is developing, but not deviating, as it takes its course. A kind of one-part song cycle, it echoes the larger serialised music that has marked Tsoupaki’s career, cycles such as Face of Love, on an intentionally reduced scale. It also sees Tsoupaki continuing to face up to the world, engaging in the humanitarian commentary she has felt more and more compelled to incorporate in her work. Thin Air finds intuitive compassion for a world in turmoil, echoing Tsoupaki’s 2017 opera Fortress Europe, which uses shimmering percussion to call out the political state’s complacency in the refugee crisis.
A solo performer herself, Tsoupaki has spent a lot of lockdown working on smaller-scale pieces, capturing the moments that lead from isolation to reconnection. Her new piece Meeting Point, which consists of simple, elegiac lines played on the piano, was paired with a solo dance performance from Shay Latukolan, filmed giving ‘a free interpretation on a deserted location’. In their own ways, the two artists worked their way into empty spaces, resembling presence while pointing to absence. ‘There is no distance between us when it comes to music’, Tsoupaki says, daring to be an idealist about sound, and its ability to endure for us, when everyone’s saying we have to cancel.