Riverbanks

On the Evros, the border river between Greece and Turkey: Yannis clears a deadly minefield with a volunteer unit, reckless, indifferent to his own life. At night Chryssa helps children across the water, to where smugglers carry the fleeing over. What binds the two is a readiness to look death in the eye — for her a way out of a ruined inner life, for him something like family. A love in a time of flight.

Spare, melodic cello lines and unmoored fragments of guitar form the core of this score — two characters, two instruments, and processing. What I was after was to tell, in music, the warmth inside so cold and desperate a setting.