Friday, September 15, 2017

'Terrible Twos'


A new work of mine and eight other premieres, duets by living composers, will be performed at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 18 at William Paterson University’s New Music Series, on a program titled “Terrible Twos.” The music was commissioned by Composers Concordance, a group of longstanding currently led by Gene Pritsker and Dan Cooper that regularly performs commissions and performs works by its members. This concert is the first event of Composers Concordance 2017-18 season.
            The program is mostly duets, split between performers Gene Pritsker and Greg Baker, electric guitars; Keve Wilson, oboe, and Kathleen Supové, piano; and Peter Jarvis, multi-percussion and Michiyo Suzuki, clarinet/ bass clarinet. They’ll be performing work by Randall Woolf, Gene Pritsker, Peter Jarvis, Greg Baker, David Saperstein, Dan Cooper, John Clark, and myself. The concert finale will be “a large semi-aleatoric piece” that will include all three duos performing as a sextet. 
My contribution will be in the clarinet and percussion duets, along with new pieces by John and Peter. The title of mine is “Lunatic,” as it was started before the recent total eclipse that captured the attention of all of North America. The event seemed to underscore what feels like a surreal time in American life and culture, one where we’re wrestling with a kind of national psychological complex related to who we were and who we are as a country and a species. The overlay of that superficial fixation onto the underlying forces of creation, symbolized by the eclipse, reveals a colorful, dark landscape of anxiety.
            Admission is free. The concert is in Shea Center for the Performing Arts, William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. I hope everyone can come and support both the Composers Concordance and the university’s New Music Series. Both deserve high praise for their relentless efforts to promote new music in high quality performances.


            --C.     
September 15, 2017

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