Jessica Shand, five short meditations on an egg (2025) for flute and cello

five short meditations on an egg (2025) for flute and cello
I. milênios
II. suspensa
III. exteriorização
IV. disfarce
V. foragido

Composition by Jessica Shand
December 6, 2025
Martinos Auditorium, Brown University

Jessica Shand, flute
Jeffrey Ziegler, cello

Jim Moses, live sound & audio recording
Brown University Media Services, video

Program Note:
These five miniatures are inspired by the work of Brazilian-Ukrainian writer Clarice Lispector, particularly Part I of her 1964 short story "O Ovo e a Galinha" ("The Egg and the Chicken"). Preparing breakfast for her children, the story's narrator cycles back restlessly to the thought of "the egg lying on the kitchen table," which becomes the catalyst for a series of oblique metaphysical ruminations. O ovo é uma coisa suspensa. Nunca pousou. [...] Faz da mesa um plano inclinado, writes Lispector; in the translation by Giovanni Pontiero: "The egg is something in suspense. It has never settled. [...] It transforms the table into a slanting plane." Yet while the egg transforms its surroundings, ver o ovo é impossível: o ovo é supervisível como há sons
supersônicos—"It is impossible actually to see the egg. The egg is supravisible just as there are supersonic sounds the ear cannot hear."