Large Ensemble

LINES/ANGLES was composed between August and November 2001. The title is reflected both in the surface materials and at the structural level. The materials consist of sustained notes or chords (“lines”) and disjunct melodic gestures (“angles”). The linear sections unfold through shifting timbre, texture, and harmonic density; the angular sections are propelled by rhythm and counterpoint. Initially, the lines and angles are kept separate, but over the course of the piece they are juxtaposed and finally integrated: the angles stretched into lines and the lines reassembled into angles. Structurally, this dichotomy is reified through formal stasis (“lines”) and disjuncture (“angles”).

The final third of the piece was composed in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States; indeed, the brutal brass passage was sketched on the very day. I dedicate LINES/ANGLES to the victims of terrorism and of the “War on Terror”.

LINES/ANGLES was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. It was first performed on February 9, 2002, under the baton of Gary Kulesha.

American Overture is an orchestral overture that reflects my American roots in its references to Rock and jazz. The music is relentlessly kinetic; from the opening bars, it has a drive that is not sated until the final chord. American Overture was first performed on November 7, 2004, by the Filhamonica de Stat “Transilvania”, conducted by Rachael Worby.

Fanfares & Fantasies was composed in 1999 as a commission from Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony to open their 2000 season and to celebrate the new millennium. My intent was to capture that celebration, but to also recognize the complexity of the world at that time; hence the idea of alternating “fanfares” with more introspective “fantasies”, though the work also traces an overall trajectory of darkness to light. The initial fanfare is pained, with dissonant intervals in the trumpets. It leads to a fantasy of swirling colors and disembodied themes. These two initial sections introduce all of the significant thematic material for the work. The second fanfare is yet darker, in the guttural lower register of the trombones. The second fantasy, a mensuration passacaglia (in which a repeated theme accelerates each time it is repeated), begins with a tuba solo followed by a duet for bassoon and muted violas and then cello with woodwinds dancing drunkenly overhead. It builds in intensity through a series of string passages, reaching a climax with the brass that leads directly into the third fanfare which features trumpets and trombones in canonical conversation. This explodes into a virtuosic triple fugue that includes all manner of fugal devices and climaxes to a final fanfare, which is transformed into a luminescent and triumphant F# major.

Night Incantation was composed in 1998 while I was living in Charlottesville, VA. It is a work about stillness. It explores thick, static sonorities that move glacially, like slow breaths, only gradually building to climaxes and subsiding.

Virvatuli was composed between February and July, 1997, while I was a Fulbright Fellow in Finland. The title is the Finnish word for “will-o’-the-wisp”, the phosphorescence of methane gas in swamps. It also means a delusive and illusory hope, goal, or aim. I tried to capture the eeriness and otherworldliness of the first aspect of the title, while at the same time realizing the second aspect structurally. The opening insect calls represent reality; the orchestra, hope and idealism. A battle ensues in which hope emerges triumphant, yet before a final resolution can be achieved, it reveals its illusory nature and disintegrates, leaving only the insects… and emptiness. Cynical? Possibly, but it is only in those moments of idealism that we can approach beauty, and that in itself is a kind of truth.

Virvatuli received First Prize in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Competition and Second Prize in the International Witold Lutoslawski Composers Competition.