Crystal Blue

Written in 2017, for toy piano (5 minutes)

 This piece seems like a light and short piece, but underneath the surface there's a lot more going on. There are two major ways that I think about this one: the first way is that this was the first piece where I recycled things, and the second way is that this is the first piece that I ever had performed internationally.

Recycling is something that I'm really interested in as an artistic process. There's a large section of my dissertation dedicated to studying and producing works in a series: a collection of stand-alone, but inter-related pieces with similar or the same material/ideas, or a shared “core conceptual value” linking one piece to another. This can range from something superficial to extremely similar reproductions of one another, but my interest is about how series composition can form a larger body of work. Part of this idea is related to how visual artists will paint the same idea or the same structure or the same aesthetic image over and over and over again to form a body of work; I think music can work the same way and I think it's a really fun way to explore ideas. However, I think when you approach this as a smaller thing, more local ideas, even something like a motif, you can start spreading ideas across many pieces. To me, these ideas are like characters in comic books that can come back to life, that can be used in various contexts, and can make appearances in other pieces or “franchises” and things like that.

With this piece in particular, the majority of this work comes straight out of Blue Color Field Triptych. In fact, it's almost a verbatim recasting of a section of the piece, but the character of the music is entirely different in my opinion. So, this isn’t an “arraignment,” per se, as much as it is a complete recasting of the same material elsewhere, in a new and specific context. It stands alone but has the same characters as Blue Color Field Triptych.

There may be a few folks out there that might think this is lazy or just biting off my own work, but ultimately, I don't think this is a big thing that composers should worry about; it's not that you're just rehashing the same thing all the time but building relationships across pieces, across ideas, and across time that form your aesthetic. It's OK to keep researching and learning and trying the same thing in different areas to see what it can do. And if I can be sardonic, I don't really think it's that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things anyway—it's just music, and it’s the totality of your work, the value of your ideas, and the interest you have as a creator that lets you explore where you can put them and what else they can mean to you. I think this process is more important, and honestly, most people probably won’t notice or really care. I think we’re safe.  

As I said, this this is the first piece that I had performed outside of the United States, and because of that, this piece has a special place for me. The piece started after seeing a call for scores for toy piano pieces and wanting to contribute something. While I would never recommend someone write a piece specifically for a call, I decided to try out this recycling idea – it seemed low-risk enough and I would be able to get my own toy piano on the cheap if the call didn’t work out anyway.

The other thing was that this was a poor performance in Australia. I've always felt like I got a little bit of a late start with composing. Other than touring in a hardcore band, I had never had a piece of music performed outside of my own academic institution until this one was selected and played in Australia by Anthony in 2017. I was 23 or 24. I used to be extremely self-conscious about my CV and would compare it to other’s all the time. Comparing how many performances I had against other people, or where they were, what they had done and who they had done it with was an extremely toxic but occupying thing and it was extremely difficult to shake off and move away from. Now that I'm a little bit older, perhaps a little wiser, I'm not as concerned about this kind of thing, and I think it's not something young composers should be particularly worried about either. That doesn't mean it should be something you forget about, and I encourage everybody to try to get their music performed widely and to have lots of friends in many places that are excited about your music, but that's not something that you should kick yourself about: it's something that you should be proactive about, and sometimes small pieces can be the way to get that door open. Having this piece as my first steppingstone into a bigger world was something very special, and I’ve kept it around as something of a reminder of that.