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.
