Artistic Director of the Treetops Chamber Music Festival Oskar Espina-Ruiz
Fun stuff happening here, been to four concerts in five nights, all celebrating various aspects of the end of the school year. Meanwhile, the Espina-Browne-Shteinberg Trio is preparing to perform GPS Lady at the Treetops Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut, Sunday, May 3rd. Check it out if you can, more info here. And here is some backstory on the piece:
One night, driving a rental car through rural California in search of a music festival, I found myself, at the insistence of my GPS, on a one-way dirt road. I had already been behind the wheel for a long time, and my ability to focus was dissolving as the hours became wee. Unable to resist the cajoling voice of my positioning system, I continued a ways down this dirt road, hoping to find some sign of my destination. Instead, I encountered a crudely painted board that said COME ANY CLOSER AND I WILL SHOOT. Needing no further inducement, I put the car in reverse and backed out the twisty, pitted path, no less in the dark than I was when I began my journey. Unperturbed, my GPS patiently encouraged me to continue forward, her soothing voice half persuading me that a quick bullet would be far preferable to further thrashing through the darkness.
GPS Lady is a love song to technology, a rumination on our sometimes perilous relationships with these maddening and comforting devices — maddening because they can be so witlessly wrong, and comforting because no matter how bad things get, their confidence never wavers.