Second Survival (2009/2016) by Linda Bouchard
for alto flute, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and piano
World premiere; Earplay/Fromm commission

Second Survival is a revised version of Systematic Survival, composed in 2009. The composer felt inclined to give the piece a modified title because she made enough revisions to the work that it will be perceived as a different piece, although still intimately related to the original version.

This piece is about the wonder I feel at our ability to endure and to persevere in the face of challenges — and to create unlikely systems to sustain ourselves through the journey. Second Survival is also about transformation.

As usual, I am concerned with texture and rhythmic interplay. In an obvious way, I have the woodwinds in one group and the strings in another. The piano straddles the strings and inhabits a textural world of its own by being prepared with small mutes, becoming in this way a "ghost" percussion player. I am always interested in defining the timbral colors of my instrumental groups and finding points of juncture between these worlds.