Ventilator [2017]
For saxophone quartet
Duration: ca. 12'
For saxophone quartet
Duration: ca. 12'
Listen to an excerpt of a performance by ~Nois:
Commissioned by Astral Artists for Project Fusion
First performance: December 9, 2017
I was thrilled and honored when Project Fusion, an ensemble I admire tremendously, asked me to write a piece for them. In planning the work, I immediately thought of the concept of “breath”. Breath is an essential component of a wind instrument’s sound, a unifying element in the coordination of any wind ensemble, and more generally, a potentially soothing, therapeutic action for both performer and listener.
Around the time I started thinking about this piece, heavy, sudden rains in southern California led to a tragedy in the section of the Los Angeles River near our home. When composing, I often find myself employing some ritual or mechanical process through which I can explore an emotional or expressive element hidden within the music. In the aftermath of this event, the metaphor of breathing felt even more poignantly relevant than before.
Members of the saxophone family—the lower ones in particular—are a wonderful paradox to me. They seem like giant, clanking machines that happen also to be incredibly agile and delicate. As I was writing, these qualities turned the quartet into a kind of fantastical engine through which musical experience was processed. Ventilator felt like an obvious choice for a title for this piece—not just in reference to the device that the quartet emulates in the opening section, but also to the overarching role of caretaker that a definition of this machine might imply: “that which helps one breathe”.
First performance: December 9, 2017
I was thrilled and honored when Project Fusion, an ensemble I admire tremendously, asked me to write a piece for them. In planning the work, I immediately thought of the concept of “breath”. Breath is an essential component of a wind instrument’s sound, a unifying element in the coordination of any wind ensemble, and more generally, a potentially soothing, therapeutic action for both performer and listener.
Around the time I started thinking about this piece, heavy, sudden rains in southern California led to a tragedy in the section of the Los Angeles River near our home. When composing, I often find myself employing some ritual or mechanical process through which I can explore an emotional or expressive element hidden within the music. In the aftermath of this event, the metaphor of breathing felt even more poignantly relevant than before.
Members of the saxophone family—the lower ones in particular—are a wonderful paradox to me. They seem like giant, clanking machines that happen also to be incredibly agile and delicate. As I was writing, these qualities turned the quartet into a kind of fantastical engine through which musical experience was processed. Ventilator felt like an obvious choice for a title for this piece—not just in reference to the device that the quartet emulates in the opening section, but also to the overarching role of caretaker that a definition of this machine might imply: “that which helps one breathe”.