I used to be ____________, but now I'm ____________ [2004]
For clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, violin and double bass
Duration: ca. 13'
For clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, violin and double bass
Duration: ca. 13'
Listen:
First performance: August, 2004 by Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center and members of the New Fromm Players - Alan Pierson, conductor
Paul Jacobs Memorial Commission, Tanglewood Music Center
It could be argued that the biggest hindrance to my development as a young composer was the rewind button on my cassette walkman. As a teenager, I would listen to a piece of music on it, get to a bit I really liked, and then keep rewinding and playing that part again and again. This particular obsession with the rewind button spawned a subsequent, brief remorse: it gradually struck me that I was arrogantly ignoring whatever form had been laid down by the composer in question in favor of my own new creation, which was maybe two bars, clumsily performed over and over until I got bored.
I'm still intrigued by the way that mechanics can shape the way I hear and put sounds together, and I used to be... grew out of this curiosity. The results came from my attempts to make shapes, phrases, and forms in my music by stitching together different chunks of repeated, almost traditional textures, as if an old and broken stereo was re-assembling a familiar piece of music. And so the record needle keeps jumping in the first section, the channel gets changed abruptly after the second, the cd gets stuck and skips in the fast bit, the violin has to play distantly through static in the slow part, and so on.
The title comes from my efforts to create something human out of a technologically accidental process. I used to be__________ , but now I'm _________ felt like an oxymoronic survey item: an arbitrary, generic and impersonal question, but one with great potential for variety, individuality, and change.
Paul Jacobs Memorial Commission, Tanglewood Music Center
It could be argued that the biggest hindrance to my development as a young composer was the rewind button on my cassette walkman. As a teenager, I would listen to a piece of music on it, get to a bit I really liked, and then keep rewinding and playing that part again and again. This particular obsession with the rewind button spawned a subsequent, brief remorse: it gradually struck me that I was arrogantly ignoring whatever form had been laid down by the composer in question in favor of my own new creation, which was maybe two bars, clumsily performed over and over until I got bored.
I'm still intrigued by the way that mechanics can shape the way I hear and put sounds together, and I used to be... grew out of this curiosity. The results came from my attempts to make shapes, phrases, and forms in my music by stitching together different chunks of repeated, almost traditional textures, as if an old and broken stereo was re-assembling a familiar piece of music. And so the record needle keeps jumping in the first section, the channel gets changed abruptly after the second, the cd gets stuck and skips in the fast bit, the violin has to play distantly through static in the slow part, and so on.
The title comes from my efforts to create something human out of a technologically accidental process. I used to be__________ , but now I'm _________ felt like an oxymoronic survey item: an arbitrary, generic and impersonal question, but one with great potential for variety, individuality, and change.