From Hexnut’s website: “WRENCH is a new project of the ensemble Hexnut together with the photographs of Edward Burtynsky. The performance consists of new compositions performed in a tightly versed integration of sound and projected image.

New compositions by Jan-Bas Bollen, David Dramm, Anthony Fiumara, Ned McGowan, Mayke Nas, Seung-Ah Oh, Steve Ricks and Felipe Waller are combined into a single set without pause. Each composer has created a musical work based on one theme of Burtynsky’s oevre, which will be incorporated into the live performance. The placement of photos is timed to best produce the dramatic effect.

Wrench is neither a background slide show for the music nor background music to accompany the images, but rather an equally balanced choreography between the two, working together to tell a story, express ideas and emotions.”

When Ned McGowan, artistic director of Hexnut, asked me to write a new piece for WRENCH, I immediately said yes very loudly. Because I think Hexnut is one of Netherlands’ finest ensembles and because I loved the idea of the new music being illuminated by photographs of Edward Burtynsky. I picked out a series of photographs on which Chinese workers assemble or prepare consumer goods, in endless rows. It would have been obvious to write fast machine music. But instead I made slow pacing music, on I Know a Man: a prose-like poem with mysterious midphrase line breaks by the poet American Robert Creeley. That calm pace with blank spaces was the basis for my song.