Uneasy

fl, cl, t.sax, perc, pno

8'

 

2009

Commissioned by the Walden School Faculty Commissioning Project

Premiered by Wet Ink Ensemble, July 10, 2009, The Walden School, Dublin, NH

 

When writing Uneasy, I wanted to see what degree of contrast and disjunction I could employ at both local and large-scale structural levels while still creating a piece that felt like a coherent whole. Attaining maximal contrast proved challenging for a variety of reasons. So many characteristics define individual musical events that any given musical event almost invariably shares some characteristics with any other. The question of what defines contrast becomes a matter of relativity – of context, scale, and degree. My instinct to seek connections among bits of material and expose or maximize the inherent potential of those connections was also difficult to ignore. Uneasy thus grew out of a mediation process between my intention to maximize contrast and my inclination to make apparent the nuanced relationships among disparate musical events.