Contextual marginalia that initially influence a composition become untraceable when that work is itself transformed, but traces of their creation are necessarily maintained.

Cut Pieces encompasses three new and interrelated compositions that invite participants and organizer alike to expand their vocabulary through collaborative and collective composition games - and the performance of their products. These composition games share themes of communal ownership, temporality, shared physical form, and multifaceted relationship dynamics.

The scores produced in Cut Pieces are just as much musical material as they are a body of shared artifacts.

Though each movement in Cut Pieces functions in isolation, their performance together in sequence sees them coalesce towards my goal of accomplishing “time travel”: the splicing of past, present, and possible future works through the production of composition Palimpsest scores. This paper and the debut recital of Cut Pieces which it accompanies alongside represent the first iteration of my new framework for experimental composition.