Ben Morris Composer 4 Corners
About the Process of Creating 4 Corners music score:
Working with Karen Stokes on 4 Corners has been rewarding. I love Karen’s vision for the project—broken into four sections, the piece explores notions of impermanence, natural processes, uncertainty, and community through movement. Rather than providing a clear narrative or didactic tone, the work dives directly into ambiguity and liminality as central ideas behind the piece.
My friend and mentor Anthony Brandt, a composer and professor at Rice University, recommended me to Karen as a collaborator on the project. As a composer, I’ve worked on many interdisciplinary projects, particularly in film, opera, and theater, but this is my first full-length dance show. Karen and I had never met in person, but we had a few phone calls discussing the vision for the project in spring 2025 and kept in touch remotely as I composed the music. She sent me a few temp tracks and videos which I adapted and made my own while in residence at Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in New Mexico this past summer. While composing, I had to balance meeting specific dramatic requirements and emotional beats in the choreography and expressing my own interpretation of the motion through music. Karen was clear but flexible— an ideal collaborator and a joy to work with.
The process for writing the music was adaptable. Karen had much of the choreography envisioned already by the time I came on, so a lot of it was like film scoring in a way. Karen sent me video and timecodes, and I matched the timeline with music, hitting the beats and making sure the music transitioned appropriately from section to section. Karen had not yet determined many of the transitions; in many ways, the music’s role was to smooth out those moments and provide a bridge between sections and emotional states. It was fun to play with counterpoint between the music and motion and see various tweaks and edits to the music and dance as the project evolved. In the piece, rhythmic motion and grooves contrast with stasis and suspension and harmonic directionality butts up against floating textural ambiguity.
I’d like to thank the musicians who helped record the work: Ginevra Petrucci (flute), Jack Bogard (violin), and Caio Alves Dinez (cello), as well as my copyist, Preston Posey.
I had the pleasure of seeing the work come to life at a rehearsal in January… you won’t want to miss it! Come out and see the show at MATCH!
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