Molten Plains

Written in 2023 for flute, bass clarinet, piano, violin, cello (20 minutes)

I wrote this piece for the first Molten Plains festival here in Denton, and I want to use this experience as a primary example of what I love about living in Denton.

Molten Plains is a monthly series of adventurous sounds and forward-thinking musical experiences. The series is held at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton, TX, curated and organized by Ernesto Montiel and Sarah Ruth Alexander, both of whom are iconic symbols of the North Texas adventurous music scene, and I try to go to every single concert on the series. In the fall of 2023 Ernesto mentioned to me that him and Sarah were organizing the first festival at the end of the year, and they asked me if I would be interested in writing a composition for the festival. Of course, I was very excited by the idea: I had gone to so many of the shows on the series, I played on the first ever Molten Plains concert with my friend Conner Simmons, and I had participated in a number of other sets and improv sets that it hosted, but I had never presented a more traditional chamber-music-like composition on any of the series concerts. 

I figured I would write something that was a little bit like a culmination of many of the ideas I've been working with the last few years. I've mentioned this before elsewhere but pieces like Codex Symphonia or Codex Vivere in some ways feel like culminations of ideas, perhaps this piece is not so much a culmination as a distillation: you can look at the score and find traces of so many other pieces inside of it, but it's still part of a somewhat unnamed series with these vertical layouts of activities and things to do. While I am proud of this piece and I like it quite a bit, the story around the piece is perhaps more interesting and something that I hold a little bit closer.

I have played at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios a number of times and been to all these shows, but I was nervous about how a piece like this might be received on a festival with so much free jazz, improvisation, noise music, etc. it's not so much that I was anxious about the reception of the piece or if people would like it or not as much as presenting myself and what I was doing to so many people who might not be familiar with it in this setting. I call this place home, so it’s not really feeling like an outsider so much is feeling like a young kid bringing an art project home to his cooler older brother and all his friends. in any case this proved nonsensical. Denton, TX has one of the most vibrant music scenes in the country, in my opinion, with so many interesting people doing amazing and interesting things; I can't think of a good reason why these folks wouldn't be interested in something different, perhaps outside of what else was happening at the festival. After all, I have a strong belief that so much of my music pairs quite well with noise music and free improvisation, both of which have been so important for my practice anyway.

Still, I have some anxiety. The first set on the festival had Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez performing what I could only describe as one of the fieriest free jazz I have ever seen, with so much energy, creativity, emotion, and expressivity coming from virtuosic and loud players in what was one of the highlight performances of the year for me. And then there was Kory.

Rubber Gloves has three big stages, or places to play rather: the main room, which is much like any small punk venue; a big stage outside; and the “Rubber Room” which is a speakeasy like room that has a shoddy acoustic upright piano in a close, intimate setting. Like I said, so much of this festival was experimental music, free jazz, free improv, and noise music, so I wasn't quite sure how the audience would react to something like this, but the room was packed, forcing the venue to open these big bay doors to the outside and into the bar area.

Rubber Gloves is right next to a Union Pacific line which frequently contributes to the soundscapes of concerts at the venue. By sheer coincidence, right before I played the first note a train came by… so we sat there in silence listening to the train pass by before we started playing… once I started playing the space became absorbed in silence and listening. So much so that you could hear the refrigerators at the bar or a pin drop in the stillness. For about 20 minutes my music floated through the room, and just as I played the final note of the piece on the piano… another train came by, book-ending the performance and forming one of the most beautiful and exhilarating environmental contributions to a piece I think I've ever performed.

I'm seriously blessed to have lived in a place like Denton for this long and to have had the opportunity to share my music with so many amazing people here. It's not everywhere on earth that allows you to do something like this - to play noise music and my quiet music next to each other - and its place where everybody listens with so much intention and attention and nobody thinks it's strange that all these things are happening right next to each other.

At the time of writing this note I'm killing time before going to the next Motel Plains, show and I can't wait to see what I find there.