Pacifica was composed by Frith at Big Sur, California in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is "a slow meditation on life and death" [3] and reflects a series of events that occurred in Frith's life at the time, namely the death of two close friends and the birth of his daughter.[4]
Pacifica was composed for an ensemble that included prepared guitars, wind instruments, percussion, a vocalist and a performer on records, CDs and tapes. The 19 member Eva Kant ensemble (named after a 1960s comic strip heroine, Eva Kant) performed the piece, with fragments of recited text from the Death Song of the Cupeño tribe of California and the tribal names of all the original inhabitants of California. The recording was supplemented later with texts from Pablo Neruda's Soneto IX and Cien sonetos de amor, read by Sergio Meza.
