this is a day that yawns like a caesura

Written in 2020 for solo contrabass (8 minutes)

Written especially for Conner Simmons

Written as something like a show-opener for Conner, this piece helped me get some of the cobwebs off my hands for the contrabass. While I play the instrument myself, I am terribly self-conscious about the prospect of writing for it. When I set out to write this piece, I combined some of my favorite things to do with the instrument: dovetailing from niente on double stops, organ-like drones, feeling the beating of micro-tones, and finding odd yet comfortable hand positions. It’s a slowly growing piece, and I think it’s really fun to swim in the huge double stops on the bass.

While the piece works on its own, I do think it works really well as an opener – I think in the premiere concert it went into a Bach suite…

This piece is also a sibling-piece to Encore/Eulogy. The material relationships, I think, are rather obvious. This one came first.