Camila Agosto: The Memory of Water, Volumes I & II Reforesters Sound Clinic Residency Presentation
What if grief were not an ending but a form of return? The Memory of Water traces the arc of a life—from water, through memory, back to water—asking what remains when we release what we thought defined us. Memory erodes. Water returns. The room will hold you, suspended between the world of the music and the one you inhabit, as sound moves around you and through you. Field recordings captured in Berlin and New York, viola, cello, voice, and electronics are woven together into a multidimensional environment that breathes, creating an immersive sonic world built from grief, memory, and renewal.
Composer Camila Agosto presents three works from The Memory of Water, an ongoing project spanning continents and years of collaboration that traces the symbolic arc of a life that begins in water and returns to water — threading personal grief, ecological urgency, and the slow unraveling of identity into immersive sonic environments. The program includes the US premiere of The sky moves beneath our feet, arriving in New York for the first time since its 2023 Berlin debut.
Performed through Reforesters' 24.2-channel sound system, these works will envelop the room—placing listeners inside shifting soundscapes built from field recordings, live electronics, viola, cello, and voice. This performance is a sonic invitation to step into this sound world and find a moment of stillness within it.
Program:
Where darkness swallows the sky, from The Memory of Water Vol. II
For viola, cello, and electronics
This work depicts a descent into vulnerability and surrender as the piece moves through the murmurs of souls navigating memory's erosion. It incorporates text from two poems by Martine Kinsella Thomas: [WHISPER. LEAVE NO IMPRINT. THE REFLECTING] and [UNTITLED].
between Here and Elsewhere, from The Memory of Water Vol. II
For viola and cello
Continuing Vol. II's meditation on souls in transit, this piece sits with the quiet distortions time creates on what we think we remember — navigating the soft blur between presence, past, and forgetting.
The sky moves beneath our feet, from The Memory of Water Vol. I (US Premiere)
For solo viola and electronics
Premiered in Berlin in 2023 and arriving in the US for the first time, this work traces the tender and eroding terrain of memory, time, loss, and grief—drawn from Entwined 3, a poem by Martine Kinsella Thomas. It weaves together viola, voice, field recordings from Wannsee, Schlachtensee, and New York, and custom instruments.
Performed by Martine Kinsella Thomas (viola), Thea Mesirow (cello), and Camila Agosto (electronics).
