FRAGMENTS

Edward Pérez & Kaoru Watanabe

The year 2020 is marked by a shattered and fragmented world: a global pandemic and resulting quarantine, further exposing underlying systemic racism in all levels of society and exacerbating the dissonance in the worlds of culture, politics, health care, commerce, and philosophies, as well as a sense of distrust in media, in science, in our leaders, in institutions, in government and other long-held beliefs.

What music could possibly speak to the reality of a world fallen apart?

Deciding to take a step back and simply send each other musical fragments, without a plan or judgment, Kaoru and Edward went through an intense back-and-forth process of writing, re-writing, discarding and writing more, weaving them into a single piece, a unified whole. Through the therapeutic process of creating music together, they discovered that parts of their lives had ended up in the piece. The resulting composition took on an insistent, urgent, yet hopeful tone. 

Beyond the solace and comfort found in music, there is hope that this historic moment will produce meaningful change that our world so desperately needs and we so fervently desire. Kaoru and Edward have graciously chosen to contribute the artist fees from the debut of this composition to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Black Lives Matter.

About Edward Pérez
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