A Face Behind

Written in 2017, for bass flute and percussion (15 minutes)

While writing this piece, a friend of mine was working on a painting of girl’s face. This painting was initially done in a very dark black ink that was then covered in a warm orange paint. The effect was the image of the girl showing clearly through the paint in some places, while being pushed back and more subdued in others. I really like the idea that a subject can be forced to the bottom layer of a fine field of color, and I tried to consider its sonic implications. The idea was to create a piece that maintains a warm (or perhaps dark) field of sonic color, with similar ‘images’ of the same ‘subject’ slowly coming to the foreground. Still, it was always my goal to create a piece where these two ideas are always congruent with each other, while still countering and shifting the focus and subject matter in a homogenous way. 

That's a little jargon-filled and clunky but there it is. So much of my early work explores the relationships between music and visual art, especially painting, and I think that idea of the “Feldman-esque” relationship with visual art comes from being a young impressionable cis white man rears its face here. That’s not to say that I think Feldman’s music is bad or anything, but there certainly is a type of person who gets obsessed with his work, and that person very often resembles me, and I was certainly one of those people when I was younger. I don't remember exactly what I was listening to, but I know for sure Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion is found in this piece somewhere and I think the obsession with abstract expressionism is here too. I think this piece is pretty abstract, but I always try to be expressive and to be emotional with my work in some way. I'm often extremely suspicious of other people that write “expressive music,” and I usually try to keep that a secret with my own work (or at least not be too explicate about it), but I think there's so much sentimentality in my music that it probably doesn't matter that much to try and hide it anyway… but this is why I like to call my music “abstract expressionism.” It’s a little cheeky, but not entirely inaccurate as far as what the words themselves mean- I have no interest in replicating the philosophy of Rothko or Pollock, but those two words next to one another really hit the nail on the head for me.

A lot of learning happened with this piece:  

I'm quite certain that this was my first “commissioned" peace, written for my friends Natalie Magaña and Nick Fox. Not that we exchanged any money- I’ve never been too concerned with that when I’m writing for close friends.

 I'm also pretty sure this is where my obsession with resonant metals comes from- at the time of writing this note in 2023, I'd say that almost every percussion piece or piece that uses percussion that I have written has some sort of resonant metal washy thing going on. Maybe I need to remedy this...

 This piece is where I fell in love with bass flute. 

This piece was written during my very first residency at arts letters and numbers – a place that seems like it has grown every year since I was there in 2017, and I’d love to try and go back some day. I have such vivid and fond memories of my few weeks there…

This was the first time anyone described my music as “extreme.” There was an Italian composer at a festival (neither of which I will name here), who seemed… rather upset with me for writing a piece that was this quiet. You can’t really tell on the recording, but in real life, you can barely hear the sponge mallets- which I’m not sure are necessary either.  

 I love this one, but a part of me wants to write another piece using the exact same instrumentation and see what I would do now, so drop me a line if you’re interested!