Severance was commissioned by the United States Navy Band. The title for the piece and for the second and third movements come from a linked collection of poetry called Severance by my friend Robert Fanning, who has been the muse for several of my recent works. Robert’s poetry often gives voice to my own emotional world in a way that is deeply important to me. In Severance, the main characters, two marionettes, Professor and Grief, sever their wires and escape the play and the theatre in Winterland in “search for a life untethered and authentic, crossing from day into night, from wood into flesh, from wakefulness into dream, from ice into thaw. Severance sings of a way—through the narrows of time and body—toward healing.” (Severance by Robert Fanning, Salmon Poetry).
In the first movement, Clouds of Remembering, I introduce all of the musical material for the piece, but it is often shrouded and ephemeral, always fleeting, like the distant memory of something or someone lost.
The second movement, Every Way Through Hurts, is dedicated to my friend Jovanni-Rey Verceles de Pedro. Jovanni and I met at the University of Michigan while completing our graduate work. He was a pianist, professor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. After graduation, we both moved to Idaho—Jovanni taught piano at the University of Idaho, and I taught music composition and theory at Boise State University. He recorded my Rhapsody for solo piano on his first studio album, and I had planned to write him a new piece, but Jovanni died suddenly in the summer of 2019 while traveling with the global nonprofit organization he founded. When I heard about his passing it took my breath away. At 36 years old—a young, hopeful, energetic musician, a person with whom I felt a kinship and a related musical path—it just didn’t seem possible that he was gone. The outpouring of grief from his friends and family was extraordinary—he had connected with so many people through music. There is no way around grief—every way through it hurts—but very gradually, the waves of grief become smaller and grow farther apart, and we come to know that we can weather them. This music is for Jovanni, and the piano plays a prominent role, often gently tracing the saxophone solo lines like some strange shadow or echo.
The third movement, Follow the threads: Unstrung, begins with metaphorical darkness. The saxophonists play slow melodic lines—threads—that are passed around the quartet and are eventually passed to the ensemble as the quartet’s music transforms into raindrops and then into a peculiar dance. I imagine the marionettes dancing, awkwardly at first, recently untethered and free from their strings, but becoming assured and ecstatic as they dance through grief, through their scars, through the waves, and toward healing.
Robert Fanning’s Severance is published by Salmon Poetry and you can find out more about his work at www.robertfanning.wordpress.com.
saxophone quartet
Anaphora
Program Note:
Anaphora was commissioned by Novus New Music, Inc. and a consortium of sponsors for the Capitol and h2 Quartets. Anaphora is a Greek word (ἀναφορά), which means “carrying back” or “turning upon,” and, among other uses, describes a linguistic device where the same word or phrase is repeated for emphasis at the beginning of subsequent clauses or sentences. It is related to epistrophe, which is the repetition of words or phrases at the end of clauses or sentences. This piece is built upon the idea of initial repetition and departure, but it also pays homage to the quirky and angular outbursts and dissonances of the great jazz standard Epistrophy by Thelonius Monk and Kenny Clarke from 1941. I think of Anaphora as a highly distorted version of Epistrophy, like a reflection warped by waves in a pool of water or like a strange solo on Monk’s tune gone awry.
Cerulean
Excerpts from Ex Machina | Sinta Quartet
Program Note:
Cerulean was inspired by my son Izaak. From the moment he was born, he was extraordinarily curious and inquisitive. He often looked around the room, searching for interesting objects, enthusiastically turning his head, and opening his big, beautiful blue eyes wide to get a better view of the world around him. He also loved (and still loves) to find and follow interesting sounds, including the sirens of passing fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. In the first movement, Sirens, I imagined waves of sound approaching and then departing in slow motion, like some strange police siren heard through a baby’s distorted sense of time. The second movement is a simple lullaby. Rather than sing the same lullaby for him each night, I often found myself humming long, repetitive, improvised phrases that eventually, over the course of rocking him to sleep, coalesced into a more coherent melody. The movement begins with soft, hushed waves—different waves than the first movement. These waves eventually transform into something more ecstatic, as I imagine him making the transition from consciousness to the exciting, magical place of a baby’s dreams. Finally, I find the tune for which I was searching, played by the soprano saxophone and accompanied by a hymn-like chorale played by the rest of the quartet that has been slightly distorted, as if the sound has been refracted through the flickering flame of a candle that is warmly illuminating Izaak’s room as he sleeps. The final movement, Goof Groove, is inspired by this goofy dance he liked to do in our living room. As a baby, he would sit and awkwardly bob his torso back and forth in a peculiar meter while singing his own crazy, lilting tune; however, as he got older and learned to walk, he began to run and spin in circles, dancing and singing silly songs. I imagined the goofy bobbing of his infancy transforming into the spinning circular dancing he now does at four years old, eventually spinning out of control, finally arriving in a tired, happy, dizzy heap on the floor.
____________________
The first and second movements were written in 2014. They were revised and the third movement was added in 2017. The premiere of the complete work was at the Schneider Concert Series at the New School, New York City on January 7, 2018.
Hear all of Cerulean on the Sinta Quartet‘s album Ex Machina.
you’ve been talking in your sleep
Program Notes: I am fascinated by sleep and dreams and, consequently, the incredibly weird and bizarre thoughts, ideas, experiences, and sounds that come out of this seemingly inactive and tranquil aspect of human existence. For instance, while working late at night, I frequently hear my wife talking aloud, presumably either to me or to something or someone with whom she is interacting in her dreams. The language is neither English nor gibberish and contains familiar words and sounds but is completely incomprehensible to me. I often imagine what it would be like to talk with her while she sleeps and experience what she experiences, but alas, I am awake and she is asleep—there is a veil of consciousness between us. For this piece, I imagined a musical language that is a sort of synthesis of both the clarity and compete nonsense of this surreal language—a kind of dialogue between the conscious self and the sleeping self. you’ve been talking in your sleep was commissioned by the PRISM Quartet.