You, Me & Debussy

You, Me & Debussy is a 45-minute spatial sound work for two acoustic pianos, positioned at a significant distance from one another within the performance space. The piece is composed entirely from ten short samples taken from Claude Debussy’s Préludes, reconfigured to explore the acoustic and psychoacoustic possibilities of spatialised performance. 

Through techniques such as stereo panning, live delay, heterophony, and unison resonance, and by exploiting the acoustic architecture of the performance space, the work creates an immersive, sculptural listening experience that blurs the line between live performance and sound installation.

At its core, You, Me & Debussy is an ecological composition—one that considers the multiple relationships between composers, performers, audience, space, and cultural history. It interrogates the sustainability of novelty by recycling and refracting canonical material, drawing attention to the cultural afterlife of Debussy’s music in an age of ambient listening, media saturation and sonic nostalgia, less an homage to Debussy than a critical engagement with what “Debussy” signifies today. 

As such, it draws on a wide range of musical lineages: from Stravinsky’s cut-up techniques to hip hop sampling; from the resonant repetition of Steve Reich to the deep listening practices of Éliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros; from the layered loops of Indonesian gamelan to the dub delays of Lee 'Scratch' Perry. 

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