BitterSweet I is my first attempt at sonifying a particular emotional transition. I became interested in this quality in music when I was playing Orlando di Lasso’s motet Tristis est Anima Mea, and was struck by not only its word-painting, but in the way it described a very powerful emotional change in the sound itself. I began by making myself a “mixtape” of songs I regularly listened to - Tom Waits, Marc Ribot, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane/Elvin Jones - that, placed one after another (or juxtaposed), described a series of emotional states that charted the gesture I wanted to make. Then began a process of distillation and then abstraction, resulting in the piece you are hearing now.

Source: 2012