Click the second image to listen to an excerpt from Déjà Vu.

Title: Déjà Vu

Year: 2019

Instrumentation: Solo Alto Saxophone

Duration: 7' 00"

Commissioned by and written for Lewis Banks as part of "Afterlife" for Alto Saxophone and Piano.

Déjà Vu subtitled A Re-Creation of the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 BWV 1007 is the 3rd movement in a larger series of works called Afterlife (written for Alto Saxophone and Piano) which is inspired by David Eagleman’s short story cycle ‘Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives’ that comprises of several speculative stories that postulate a diverse range of scenarios in which humans might find themselves in the afterlife. 

Déjà Vu for solo Alto Saxophone is based on the chapter entitled “Encore”, which tells of the Re-Creators who attempt to build a simulation of each person through the records left behind from their past life. Their aim is to recreate a person so impeccably that they will not be able to fathom whether they are still alive or are, in fact, in the afterlife; the only teller being the occasional occurrence of déjà vu reminding them that they have lived this life before. Therefore, this piece attempts to explore Encore’s ideas by recreating the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 as though this work is being reconstructed in the afterlife as some kind of holographic simulation.