‘Four Notes From Paterson, New Jersey’ is a composition exploring the diasporic tales of immigrant workers, structured around narratives taken from archival interviews that provide an oral history of one of the first immigrant communities in America.

Paterson was a vibrant, bustling industrial city with diverse production lines, varying from the finest silks to the Colt Revolver. The town became a magnet for immigrant workers, attracting large numbers of Italian, South American, Russian and Polish communities, who formed the bedrock of modern day multi-cultural America.

This composition was inspired by the pulsating production lines that powered the cities economy, weaving, hitting and slowly revolving. The music carries the narrative like the Passaic River carries the industries of Paterson, on a winding journey of repetition and slow change. Evolving into a seamless weave between people and place, a duet between the workers and the industries they fuelled.

My initial interest in Paterson was sparked by researching my own Sicilian heritage, as the descendent of Sicilian immigrants I’ve always been fascinated by the founding of disaporic communities worldwide.

This piece will be part of a larger musical body of work that I’m currently developing based on archival oral histories.