The first movement, “Ch’ab’,” is inspired by a Mayan bloodletting ritual. It is as violent as its subject matter, with a screaming cello and bass clarinet part, and takes the various blood rituals as both dramatic and metaphoric models for the piece.

The second movement, “Samhain,” takes its inspiration from the Celtic ritual occurring at the end of the harvest, which marks the beginning of the long dark winter.  One by one, the instruments walk metaphorically between two giant bonfires, purifying themselves for the coming season as they toss the bones of slaughtered animals into the fire.

The third movement, inspired by the ancient Greek Dionysian Dithyramb, is an explosive and erratic dance, led by a leaping bass clarinet part and driving quasi- Afro-Cuban drums. Musical influences for this movement come primarily from the realms of rock and jazz, and polymetric layering pushes the whole thing forward like a limping, lurching dancing machine.

“Beaufort Gyre” is a deeply-felt lament for the arctic ice which sustains an entire ecosystem. It takes its name from the ocean current of the same name, which is a slow-moving (one might even say “glacial”) flow of ice which encompasses much of the arctic and takes 2 years to make a full revolution. You can read more about it here. When I originally planned this piece in 2004 I was unaware of the significance this particular current held in the global warming debate, and I was unaware that it was essentially changing irrevocably.

Like much of my work (and much of my way of looking at the world, really), “Space Tornado” is at once tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious. On the one hand, the title is hilarious to me, and evokes bad pilot nicknames from various sci-fi movies (”you don’t have to worry about those aliens, captain, because The Space Tornado is here!”). On the other hand, this is the colloquial name for an astronomical phenomenon that is related to the Aurora (read the basic explanation here), and, in relation to the movement that comes before it (”Beaufort Gyre”), I am conceiving of this movement as the ethereal ascent of the the spirit of the arctic after its death. So, the movement is (hopefully) both sublime and ridiculous.

The piece will be premiered by the trio Primary Colors (Jeff Heisler, saxophone; I-Chen Yeh, piano; Isabelle Huang, percussion), with Ian Jeffress (also on saxophone) at the 2010 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Convention in Athens, Georgia on March 5th.

After my little piece opened the concert, we were treated to Bernard Rands’s gorgeous now again: fragments from Sappho, conducted by  Cliff Colnot with Suzanne Mentzer, mezzo-soprano. Among the many fascinating aspects of the score was the use of two vocalists as members of the ensemble (effortlessly executed by Nina Heebink, alto, and Amy Conn, soprano), whose role flowed seamlessly between that of instrument and quasi-Greek chorus. Hearing the piece made me look forward to this summer, when I will get the opportunity to work with Mr. Rands at the Tanglewood summer program.

Closing the first half of the concert was Yu-Hui Chang’s Binge Delirium for solo percussion, performed by Matthew Duvall of eighth blackbird, an artist of considerable range. In my mind, there are four classifications of people who play percussion instruments: drummer, percussionist, musician, and artist. Matthew Duvall is a bona fide artist, and got to show some of that range on Chang’s exciting piece, which could be described as a virtuosic and focussed study in the melodic capabilities of non-pitched percussion instruments.

The second half of the concert featured a fluid musical conversation between jazz pianist Kenny Werner and saxophonist Chris Potter. As Shulamit Ran said when introducing the second half of the concert, I was looking forward to the second half of the concert just as much as the first half, as Chris Potter has been one of my favorite saxophonists since I was in high school. The two great performers blurred the lines between composition and improvisation to such an extent that the performance had an almost magical effect on me, and very much did what the evening was intended to do: to re-consider the divide between new concert music and jazz. The only other time I had heard a duo so attuned to each other’s music-making was when I saw Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter at the Newport Jazz Festival after the release of their album 1+1 in 1997. Werner and Potter’s music was a superb way to close a really spectacular night.

You can read some reviews by other (potentially more objective) listeners online: Andrew Patner (Chicago Sun-Times), Lawrence A. Johnson (Chicago Classical Review), and jazzchicago.net (which also contains one photo of eighth blackbird playing the fourth movement of my piece) all reviewed the concert.

I. Tun ‘Tawu

II. Death’s Head

III. Atlas

IV. Chrysalis

Commissioned by The Esoterics (Seattle, WA) as winner of 2009 POLYPHONOS competition, U.S. composer category
Text: from “The Sleepers” by Walt Whitman
Premiered Oct. 17th, 2009 by The Esoterics, Eric Banks, Conductor, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Seattle, WA
Performed Oct. 18th, 2009 by The Esoterics Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Seattle, WA