Music Creation

Anna Elder’s compositional inspirations are rooted in scaring the shit out of her family while performing in noise bands from their basement in the 1990s. Somehow, she made it to the Eastman School of Music. She enjoys bringing electronics, humour, and uncommon extended techniques to her pieces. She has written and arranged for herself, Kamratōn Ensemble, and SydeBoob Duo.

Her next compositional endeavor is Your Next Stop, a an open instrumentation work that combines electromagnetic radiation and live performance inspired by the warnings of a future dystopian era as depicted in the TV show The Twilight Zone. Keep an eye out for more information on this future performance.

Call Girls, for SydeBoob Duo (flute, bass flute, alto flute, electronics, and high soprano voice)

Call Girls is inspired by three different characters I have played as a phone sex worker, a job I have maintained on and on since 2009 which helped me get out of student debt. Tiffany, is the typical straight male fantasy. She is thin but she’s stacked on top and bottom, she’s young, and she’ll do anything to please you. Chiara is based on a character I played who spoke mostly Italian. Men would call for the accent and to hear her say nasty things in Italian. Alda Merini’s beautiful poem describes a woman who has been prescribed a traditional Italian housewife role, stemming from the trauma that Catholicism imparts on women, urging them to suppress their goals and sexuality in exchange for being owned by a man. I related to these themes as a woman who was raised in the church and attended Catholic school, while realizing they were queer and didn’t want children. Charlie is a dominatrix who demands complete submission from her clients. I have played different dom characters and have used mental manipulation, chastity, and tasks to bond them to me. The piece involves elements of improvisation through graphic scores as well as traditionalnotation. The electronics use phones, phone sex workers, masturbation courtesy of freesound.org, pigs, drones, record players, and static inviting you to experience a typical and not so typical phone sex call.