JASHIIN (b.1984)
Interior/Exterior Pieces (2019–21)
Zeynep Büşra Eldem, piano
This is the first in a new series of digital-only Mode albums created to accommodate flexible program lengths.
This release presents a contemplative work for piano by Istanbul-based composer Jashiin performed by pianist Zeynep Büşra Eldem. Interior/Exterior Pieces lies within the iconoclastic tradition of Howard Skempton and early John Cage.
Interior/Exterior Pieces is a seven-movement piano cycle that creates and explores an imaginary home by using textures and rhythms as musical symbols. A descending chordal passage might indicate a staircase; music played forwards and backwards might show a mirror on a wall. A wide arpeggiated chord could be a gust of wind, or fresh air entering a room through an open window. Textures, echoes, symmetries, reflections: the symbols and their meanings carry over from movement to movement, until the listener is immersed in this musical language and can create their own visions of a house and a garden near the sea.
Jashiin writes in his extended and personal liner note essay:
“The idea [of the music] coalesced into a short excursion inside an imaginary house, and as I listened to the finished piece, it was becoming clear to me that the house was empty, and that I knew the view outside… I didn’t think of specific locations, only of what I imagined such homes might look and feel like inside and out. So the imaginary villas became populated with my obsessions: my fascination with nature reclaiming abandoned human homes, my distrust of mirrors, my love for the sea.”