Imitation Scenes  for 3 performers
Total duration of 13 minutes - Composed in 2026

Imitation Scenes is a work for percussion trio that explores imitation between performers’ voices and percussion instruments. Conceived as a study of mimesis, the piece treats sound as a shared physical gesture: objects mimic voices, voices echo instruments, and performers mirror or exaggerate one another’s actions. In this way, imitation functions not only as a device shaping the musical structure, but also as a reflection of human behaviour, lending the work a subtle theatrical dimension.

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Scenes I to III draw on a deliberately limited set of sonic materials—newspapers, the friction of superball mallets, and flexatones. In contrast, the final scene expands this restrained palette into a collage of diverse sounding imitations between voice and percussion instruments.

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Scene I: News for the End of the World

In this scene, three strangers read the news. The musical form unfolds through the gradual physical transformation of the instrument—newspapers—whose sounds evolve from the gentle shaking of paper to increasingly restless gestures, eventually collapsing into the crumpling of the page.

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Scene II: Mmm

Evoking three characters trying to communicate with each other, this scene is a study of sound mimesis between voice and instrumental sound sources. Centred on different inflections of the consonant “m,” it draws on the familiar vocal gesture through which humans express doubt, questioning, affirmation, or understanding. Subtle variations blur the boundary between voice and instrument, turning a simple sound into a shared sonic gesture.

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Scene III: Spring Serenade

This scene explores the expressive possibilities of the flexatone, an instrument capable of producing fluid and unstable pitch. Treated as a study of melodic contour and pitch direction, the flexatones blend with whistling voices to create a fragile soundscape in which birdsong and fragments of Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons briefly emerge and dissolve.

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Scene IV: Canon Alone

The final scene resumes, in a broader and more substantial way, the subjects explored in the previous scenes. Through a musical canon in which the percussion mirrors and mimics different vocal gestures with a delay, this scene examines, in a more conceptual manner, two ways of portraying the contrast between inside and outside.

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In the first half, vocal sounds (“inside” sounds) interact with percussion (“outside” sounds).. The second half, conceived as a sound collage, explores the contrast between “indoor sounds”— associated with intimacy—and “outdoor sounds”—suggesting disruption. Within this texture, a melodic cell taken from the main theme of the Christmas film Home Alone appears in fragmented and transformed form, giving the scene its title.