Wolke über Bäumen for violin with gut strings and Baroque bow [2016]
with works by Lawrence Dunn, Arne Gieshoff, Liza Lim, Lisa Streich
Evan Johnson’s Wolke über Bäumen […] shows this composer’s use of extremes to particularly stark effect. The piece demands gut strings, played with a baroque bow, but the idiom is blasted and barren, using techniques that eke out the strange and sour in the organic inconsistencies of the physical materials. To hear the intricacies in each of the faint wisps of sound, you must also accept being battered by the sudden outbursts of violent noise; as a pastoral, it depicts nature in its harshest light.
— Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill