vi (2010)

for piano and percussion (vibraphone, 2-octave crotales)

Commissioner: 

Jana Mason & Richard Anderson, 21st Century Piano Commissioning Competition, Urbana, IL

Premiere:

February 2010, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Urbana, IL

Juri Seo (piano), Mark Eichenberger (percussion)

Recording:

May 2015, Taplin Auditorium, Princeton, NJ

Thomas Rosenkranz (piano), Mark Eichenberger (percussion)

Andres Villalta (recording engineer)

Program Note:

Several years ago, after a long period of eschewing consonance and familiar chords for a more abstract, modernist language, I brought back harmony to try to see it in a new light. In vi, triads and seventh chords made a defiant comeback. My longing for a recognizable musical syntax led me back to tonality. As I wrote, tonal moments melted into passages of obfuscating texture only to emerge, when the texture cleared, with a sense of irony. The structure of this piece is delineated by the interaction of subtly-shifting bitonal chords, which are created with the piano’s sostenuto pedal and selective muting in the vibraphone. The climax contains a slanted quote of R. Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the epitome of major-minor ambiguity. 

vi was written in the winter of 2009-2010 for myself and then my friend (now my spouse) Mark Eichenberger for the premiere at the 21st Century Commissioning Award at the Krannert Center for the Arts.

v (2015)

Premiere:

January 2016, Lexington, KY

Matthew Geiger (vibraphone)

Recording:

2023 Recording of Mike Truesdell

Program Note:

v is part of an ongoing series for vibraphone and various instruments. Other works in the series include vi for piano and vibraphone, vv for two vibraphones, and Sonata for vibraphone and marimba. My works for the vibraphone often feature composed decay that takes advantage of the instrument's long resonance. By selectively muting parts of a chord, the harmonic contexts and trajectories can be altered. In v, frustrated resolutions and polyphonic lines distinguished by the sustain profile take on poetic resonance. While all five movements of v begin with the same chord, each takes on its own unique journey. The first movement, "Prologue," alternating between two contrasting tempi and characters, recalls Robert Schumann's frequent digressions in his piano works. The second, "Duple Dance," is a charming dance movement in binary form. The third, "Abwesenheit," is inspired by Andante of Beethoven's op. 81a, with its poignant expressions of loss and longing (for his patron Archduke Rudolf, not his lover). The fourth, "Petite Play" is a petite play between the "white" and "black" keys. The final movement, "Da Capo al Coda Dodecafonia" is a dodecaphonic tempo canon that concludes with distorted flashbacks of preceding movements. v was written in 2015 for the percussionist Matt Geiger.

vv (2015, rev. 2018)

for two vibraphones and four percussionists

Follow this link to watch the performance

Premiere: 

October 2015, Princeton, NJ (pre-revision)

So Percussion

Recording:

September 2018, Princeton, NJ

So Percussion

Program Note:

My primary inspiration for vv was the instrument itself, especially its dark metallic sound with prolonged resonance. For the opening, I built harmonies that evolve during decay by selectively removing individual notes. The musicians use their fingers and mallets to dampen the notes, intimately feeling the vibrations as the notes disappear. The introduction sets the stage for a playful theme, which gives rise to an unconventional sonata form where the themes move toward dissolution instead of consolidation. Beyond the sounding music, I was interested in how four percussionists interact with each other to collectively execute complex musical gestures. It is as if the mallets are the fingers of a single person.