From Improvising in Caves to Spoken in Waves

Spoken in Waves is a new piece for cello and string quartet by Chris Beroes-Haigis, commissioned by cellist Cicely Parnas. The video performance was premiered in December of 2023. In this blog post, Cicely and Chris tell us a bit about the backstory of the piece, the journey to recording the piece, what it’s like to perform the piece and more. The video performance can be found below.

In 2019, I was on tour with my cello rock band and found myself in El Paso, TX, the city where my good friend Chris Beroes-Haigis lived. We had met two years earlier as fellows at the Sitka International Cello Seminar in Alaska, and I remember I was struck both by Chris’s beautiful music-making on the cello, and that he was one of those rare, really-really-really good people.

While catching up in El Paso, he told me that he had been doing some composing. Of course I wanted to hear! He opened his laptop, and as MIDI notes barked out of the speakers, I blurted out, “Will you write me a piece?” I think Chris was a little surprised, but I could hear there was something incredibly special in his writing, and that the cello repertoire needed his voice in it.

Now we fast forward a few years to 2022, when Chris and I were back at the Sitka Seminar, and Spoken in Waves had just been finished a few months prior. It was written for cello and string quartet, but Chris whipped up an arrangement for ten cellos for us to perform together. I cried quite a lot of happy tears as we worked it up with the other cellists, feeling that this — bringing new works to life — was truly where I find the most fulfillment in life. It was such a meaningful, full-circle moment to premiere Spoken in Waves in Sitka, where Chris and I had first met, surrounded by the calls of bald eagles and gentle waves of the ocean.

Spoken in Waves is pure magic. It tells a story and takes the listener on a journey, all the while balancing complexity and simplicity, consonance and dissonance, raw expression and introverted feeling, and rhythm and freedom. It is a piece you will love on the first listen, and enjoy more and more with each listen thereafter. It’s a masterclass in string writing, and a brilliant expression of artistry.

Here are some words from Chris about his writing process:

The music that I write is born from improvisation. In a form of meditation, I sit with an instrument — usually a cello, guitar or piano — and let myself explore for an extended period of time. This process brings me great solace. When I am feeling overwhelmed, it calms my nerves and gives an outlet to emotions that I don’t know how to express in words. At other times, it is a playful way for me to expand my vocabulary and deepen my connection to my inner voice. During the improvisation process, it is important for me to not judge the material I am playing. I just let every idea make its way out in a stream of consciousness, splatter-paint sketch. Sometimes, more organized musical phrases will emerge, but I only follow those instincts if they arise naturally. I don’t place any preconceived notions of structure on the improvisations while I am playing them. Instead, I record these improvisations so that I can return to them later with an analytical ear. I transcribe them, edit them, and rearrange them; then weave my favorite parts into full compositions. A majority of the material I gather when I improvise never makes it to the notated stage.

Spoken in Waves is based on a cello improvisation that I recorded in a massive cave along the Hudson River near Kingston, New York — an abandoned limestone mine dating back to the industrial era. Equipped with a few lights, a cello and a microphone, I explored the cave with the intent to use it as creative inspiration. Upon entering, my surroundings reflected every characteristic that one might attribute to the underworld; it was cold, damp, seemingly devoid of life and infinitely dark in every direction. As I made my way fully inside the cave, not a single beam of outside light guided my path. However, despite the ghostly aura that surrounded me, I found myself in a state of profound peace, completely unhindered by any outside distractions. I decided to unpack my cello and begin recording at the front of a large water reservoir that extended far into the cave; an underground shoreline. As I played, I focused on the cave’s rambling, complex echo that transformed even the most delicate trickles of rain that seeped through the earth into a vast cacophony. A single cello note sent out an explosion of reverberations which lasted for over 10 seconds before fully decaying. In the darkness, my imagination ran wild. The human sounds of the cello and the natural sounds of the cave created a musical dialogue; at times competing with one another and at times in perfect harmony. Because the cave’s echoes of the notes I played became so integral to the musical ideas I formed there, I knew that they needed to be expressed somehow in the final composition. It was no longer simply a solo cello improvisation, but a duet between a cello and the space around it. During the transcribing process, I treated these reverberations as an instrument in and of itself which then became translated into a set of instruments; a string quartet now playing the role of the cave.

For me, the title Spoken in Waves expresses something that can’t be put into words. It refers to the musical dialogue between the cave and the cello and the waves of my own emotion that were woven into the music, as well as the sound waves themselves. I didn’t want the title to give away too much, or influence the way in which someone might listen. Instead, I’d like the listener to enter the world of this piece not knowing what will be found, the same way that I entered the cave four years ago. Although the initial ideas for Spoken in Waves came from a single experience in an abandoned mine in New York, I completed most of the writing right after moving to New Orleans in 2021. I consider a significant amount of this piece to be influenced by the music and musicians I came into contact with during that time.

After the premiere of Spoken in Waves in Alaska, Chris and I began planning to make an official recording of it with a string quartet. After months of preparation, including a successful Indiegogo campaign, it was recorded last fall in a dance studio in Berlin (my current home), with an incredible team of artists from all over the world (Chris was on video chat from New Orleans for the entire recording session). I am so proud to bring it to your screens, and hopefully soon to the stage.

Finally, I am thrilled to announce that Spoken in Waves is only the beginning! Chris is writing two more movements to make this piece an impressive three-movement work for cello and string quartet, which, to my knowledge, is the first of its kind. How exciting is that?! For now, you can watch the video recording of the first movement and find the sheet music via a link in the video description. In the future, there will be a full recording of all three movements and much, much more. I can’t wait to continue this amazing, rewarding journey and share it with the world.