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Program Notes:

Liquid Architecture was inspired by the work of Frank Gehry, whose work includes the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, among many others. I have heard his structures described as “liquid architecture,” and having experienced several of these buildings in person, I find this description to be both apt and stunningly beautiful. I love the image that this phrase evokes—that of a fixed structure taking on the physical properties of a liquid, like massive, molten droplets of metal melting into time—and I wanted to capture this same idea in music. In each movement, I have tried to create a vivid musical space that is slowly transformed into something very different from its original form, although, in some ways, it ends up returning to its original form, much in the same way that I think it is possible to imagine Gehry’s structures evolving in time. The first movement is entitled hard, and the second movement is entitled smooth.