Birds of Paradise Lost begins with a prerecorded prologue in which I multitrack Chenoa Anderson’s recordings of various whistling, overtone, breath and microtonal sounds. The rest of the composition unfolds in real-time: the flutist reads from a musical score; the computer musician captures the sounds to create a complete soundscape based on them. The flute is transposed, delayed, filtered, echoed, cut up, granulated, and reworked to create an accompaniment that fills the space and frequency spectrum. No recordings of birds were used, yet their echoes fill the music.

Birds of Paradise Lost was commissioned by Chenoa Anderson with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA).