9 minutes / 1995 / Commissioned by the ASCAP Foundation and the Oregon Symphony
Aljira is the aboriginal word for "land of no time." This work is a journey through a slowly changing landscape marked by discrete "sound objects" which appear and reappear, like farmhouses and cornfields, in a ride through the countryside. At the end of the trip, the landscape has undergone subtle transformations and we find ourselves simultaneously someplace else and at the same place as where we started.
8 minutes / 2002/ Commissioned by Friends of Today's Music of the Music Teachers Association of California
[In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 ]
And blue sparks burn was commissioned by Friends of Today's Music of the Music Teachers' Association of California for premiere at the 2002 MTAC Convention.
The work was conceived in October of 2001, soon after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington, D.C. While the nation was mourning the tremendous and senseless loss of lives, I was haunted by the images of dust and eerie calm that permeated the news coverage in the aftermath of the disaster. This is my personal response.
16 minutes/ 1990/ Commissioned by the Vancouver New Music Society
Commissioned by the Vancouver New Music Society, Changes was composed in Newhall, CA, during the summer of 1990. It was my first commission and I was encouraged that Owen Underhill and the VNMS showed such faith in me, after having presented my first professional performance the previous year.
Early that summer, I was invited to Sapporo, Japan, for a gathering of composers from the Pacific Rim countries. The experience of being in the company of numerous composers whom I admired and respected, and hearing gagaku, an ancient Japanese court music, for the first time had a profound effect upon me. The opening movement owes a great debt to this mystical music.
A reviewer who attended the premiere in October of 1990 described this set of five eclectic miniatures as "continually oppos[ing] fixed rhythms against liquid ones, hard timbres against soft,” noting a "compressed style of utterance." Though the disparate nature of the pieces create distinct entities, unifying elements connect incontiguous movements, suggesting a transformation of ideas among the set of pieces. The first, third and fifth movements are related by the concept of a time cycle, while the fourth movement acts as a sublimation of the second. Whereas the first movement introduces the instruments as component parts of a musical whole, the whole music is embodied in the solo contrabass movement at the end. I learned to play pizzicato bass harmonics that summer, koto-style, with the instrument lying on its side on the floor.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, Changes would have a tremendous impact upon my later work. I look back fondly now on the piece as representing a significant “coming together” in my compositional aesthetic.