Program Notes
(Original notes from 2010)
For some reason, I had always assumed that seamlessness was the goal in the creation of music. And on the contrary, I’ve always felt gaping seams in my own music that, no matter how many times I work and rework, are still stubbornly audible.
It occurred to me recently that in other temporal art forms, namely modern literature and film, artists use seams in a different way: instead of seeking to eliminate them by delivering the observer safely from one event to the next, a series of seemingly disconnected images are presented, and it is only as the work progresses that the relation between those images are revealed. Or perhaps the images are presented in a way that suggests a certain obvious progression of events, but as the work unfolds, the audience becomes aware of many other combinations and outcomes that are possible from the material presented.
This is my first attempt to replace my previous notion of seamlessness with one of possibility. Two ideas develop simultaneously, cut into one another, not converging or relating, just existing in the same space.
Recording
Premiere/Performances
This piece was commissioned by the Yale School of Music Trumpet Studio. It was premiered on January 18, 2010 at Yale University, Sprague Hall in New Haven, CT.