Rubicon is the ancient name for a small stream that formed part of the boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul; the crossing of it by Caesar marked the beginning of the war with Pompeii. Since this event, many Rubicons have been breached and the word Rubicon is now synonymous with boundary, boundary line or limit.

Recent history and ongoing events show how the Rubicon has become symbolic of borders that define countries and cultures. Rubicons are breached with devastating results; we only have to think of events such as September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq; political, religious and aesthetic differences motivate change agents to invade which largely result in violence and destruction. The change agent’s public are led to believe that this is all for the best. But, where is the Phoenix? Can one culture really enforce its ideals on another with success when representing polemical political aesthetics?

This piece may be seen as an examination of whether different Rubicons, be they musical, political or physical, can truly be integrated. Therefore, Rubicon Drift attempts to cross sonic and critical boundaries. For example, the source material was originally an eclectic collection of improvisations produced by saxophonist and improviser, Petter Fadnes. I would argue that the mainstream notion of improvisation is firmly rooted in the idea of the live performance. Rubicon Drift, however, uses this sonic material to create an acousmatic composition that challenges the notion that performance is unique to the moment when the performance was generated, or, a performance is something that is merely reproduced via tape or CD in order to become canonical; the definitive, bad, good etc…. The fact that the sonic material for this piece was presented on CDR and was given to me as source material upholds this challenge.

Sonic and melodic gestures have been altered and explored for their intrinsic qualities (put under the microscope so to speak for further compositional consideration, rather than for montage or 'remix'). Rubicon Drift was created solely with this material and carries on my previous work regarding extending the performance possibilities of an instrument through computer aided sound transformation.

Rubicon Drift begins and ends with an aesthetic reflection on symphonic orchestration and then progresses by introducing further melodic material that fictitiously represents music from an alternative culture. This is interpolated with motivic developments based on these melodic phrases. The saxophone material is deconstructed until what we know as Saxophone, is almost lost, but only to later re-emerge as playing different melodies reminiscent of jazz and folk music etc.... The piece closes with a recapitulation of the opening sections.

Rubicon Drift demonstrates that Rubicons can be crossed, and I would argue, with success from a surface structure point-of-view. However, aesthetically, there is no Phoenix - only a Sphinx; a possible hybrid, a difficult question or problem to deal with; something useful for sonic art, but when transposed onto world politics, a highly charged and dangerous polemic.