for Eliza (2013)
for solo piano
Commissioned by Eliza Garth
Premiered November 2013 by Eliza Garth
Live performance recording April 2015
Lawrence Quinette, piano
Opperman Music Hall, Tallahassee, FL
Much of my music deals with sustain: it may be the use of long tones to provide foundation for a listening focus, to build a seemingly static texture, to enable digestion of a sound/chord/moment/piece, or for other intentions. I carefully examine the capacity and type of a particular instrument to both sustain and mask attack.
The opening section of for Eliza requires focus on a very different sort of sonic envelope. The process of writing it resulted in forming a kind of negative exposure of my compositional approaches, where, in some cases, durations which would have been filled with sustained sound became rests, and rests became sounding attacks.
It is during the moments of rest in for Eliza, that articulations of the resonating voice of the instrument become noticeable. Each cluster encourages a distinct resonating note/chord, which is then combined with the resonance of the cluster that precedes it. Over time, these resonances build and build, generating more complex resonances whose foci change from attack to attack. This produces a sort of dynamic undertone. Our ear shifts back and forth between these two levels of sonic activity.
