A Long Conversation About Silence

The composer on empty rooms, unfinished work, and why she stopped answering the phone.

She arrives early and sits without speaking for a while, which turns out to be the point rather than an accident of scheduling.

“People think silence is what is left when you stop,” she says. “It is the material. Everything else is decoration on top of it.”

Her last record took four years. The one before took seven months and she describes it, without cruelty, as the worst thing she has made.

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