CVA - What does a stroke sound like?

In the summer of 2011, my mother suffered a cerebrovascular accident, more commonly known as a stroke, causing her to lose her speech. In the following months, she recovered very slowly and it ultimately took her half a year to fully recover from her damages.

CVA has been my way to deal with this accident and started to take shape during the months of my mother’s recovery. The choice for the instrumentation was easily made; my mother plays the flute herself.

The structure of the piece is a time-lapse of a stroke, starting before the accident and ending during recovery. The lyrical part resembles the brain in a state where nothing is wrong, while the part with the extended techniques resembles the part of the brain that has been cut of blood, and is slowly recovering.

CVA is dedicated to my mother, Jeanet van Schaik