In her lifetime was composed for my friend Thomas Kotcheff to perform alongside the premiere of Sarah Gibson’s solo piano work The Pepper Tent. Sarah Gibson (1986-2024) was Thomas’s partner in piano duo HOCKET as well as a brilliant composer and friend.

 

When Sarah died, I took some small comfort in listening to her voice. In her lifetime takes

inspiration from a filmed interview where Sarah talks about the artist Miriam Schapiro, the

inspiration for Sarah’s orchestral piece warp & weft. As Sarah describes Schapiro’s work, she says how amazed she was by “all the things she did in her lifetime.” In her lifetime is inspired by Sarah’s speech patterns in that sentence, transposed to align more closely with the start of Sarah’s piece The Pepper Tent. Because In her lifetime was written to be premiered with The Pepper Tent, the ending of In her lifetime is also connected to the melody in the first few bars of Sarah’s work, leading one piece into the next.

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