On a Clear Day

Written in 2019 for solo piccolo (12 minutes)

This one is a little different from much of my catalog. The idea for this piece came from thinking about my neighbor’s windchimes as well as an album I found on Bandcamp that essentially used high-speed wind blowing across a cracked window in a car. I can’t find this album (I should have bought it), but there was something deeply affecting and melancholic from this high-pitched whistling sound. There is something to the sound of an abandoned front porch on a hot day…

I wanted to try something a little more intense but try and push the piccolo to its extremes in terms of volume (an instrument I associate with loud band music), and in terms of breath (I also think of piccolo is piercing). With these two ideas in mind, I worked with my friend Alaina Clarice on finding a technique that sounded breathy, undefined, and slightly chaotic but could be juxtaposed with quiet and clear articulations. We called this “voiced” and “unvoiced” sounds.  

The recording of this piece presents it much louder than it sounds in real life, but I like hearing all the little detail and the human quality of hearing the player’s body. I recommended listening at about 1/3 volume for a closer in-person sound.