My Heart Is A River

My Heart is a River is a one-hour audiovisual performance for cello and surround media, written by Freida Abtan for Seth Parker Woods. Narratively, it investigates those moments where subjective identity must be reformed. The first act is inspired by Abtan’s family story of immigration and the experience of one’s culture being judged through another. The second, by childhood obsession and rejection. The third: familial acceptance and the death of a parent. Each movement uses unique, related, aural and visual processes in its aesthetic and is a self-contained vignette depicted as a dream originating from the cellist’s instrument.