The Light That Fills the World (2001)
The Light That Fills the World was written in late
winter and early spring when – following the long darkness of winter – the
world is still white and filled with new light. The title is borrowed from an
Inuit song which sings of the close relationship between beauty and terror,
risk and revelation.
Dark Wind (2001)
Like most of us, in the days following September 11,
2001 I found myself grappling with troubling questions about the meaning of my
life’s work. Dark Wind emerged as an attempt to find some glimmer of light and
hope amid the gathering darkness.
As in all of my recent music, I imagine the entire
ensemble as a single instrument and the entire piece as a single complex
sonority.
Three High Places (2007)
Gordon Wright was the friend of a lifetime. For
thirty years Gordon and I shared our two greatest passions: music and Alaska.
Gordon was my musical collaborator, my next-door neighbor, my fellow
environmentalist and my camping buddy. These miniatures are musical sketches of
three moments and places in our friendship.
All the sounds are produced as natural harmonics or
on open strings. The violinist never touches the strings to the fingerboard. If
I could have found a way to make this music without the violinist touching the
instrument, I think I would have.
Red Arc/Blue Veil (2001)
Red Arc/Blue Veil is the first piece in a projected
cycle exploring the geometry of time and color – what Kandinsky called “those
inner sounds that are the life of the colors”. As in all of my recent music, I
imagine the entire ensemble (piano, percussion and processed sounds) as a
single instrument, and the entire piece as a single complex sonority. The
processed sounds are derived directly from the acoustical instruments.
The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies-roar (2002)
All noise contains pure tone. And the complex
sonorities of percussion instruments conceal choirs of inner voices. In The
Mathematics of Resonant Bodies my search was to find and reveal those voices.
Like the listener, the soloist in these pieces is a solitary figure traversing
enveloping landscapes of resonance.
The Light Within (2007)
Sitting in the silence of their meetings, Quakers
seek to “greet the light within”. In his work, the artist James Turrell (a
Quaker himself) says that he aspires to address “the light that we see in
dreams”.
On a crisp autumn day sitting inside Meeting –
Turrell’s skyspace at PS1 in Queens, New York– I experienced my own epiphany of
light. From mid-afternoon through sunset into night, I was transfixed by the
magical interplay of light and color, above and within.
Over the hours the sky descended through every
nameless shade of blue, to heaviest black. The light within the space rose from
softest white, through ineffable yellows to deepest orange. Just after sunset
there came a moment when outside and inside met in perfect equipoise. The
midnight blue of the sky and the burnished peach of the room came together,
fusing into one vibrant yet intangible plane...light becoming color, becoming substance.
Out of this experience came The Light Within. A companion
to The Light That Fills the
World (1999/2001), the harmonic colors of this new piece are more complex and
mercurial than those of its outward-looking predecessor. Within this more
introspective sonic space, the light changes more quickly, embracing darker
hues and deeper shadows.
* Veils (2005)
Veils are electronic soundscapes that fill time
and space with rich, enveloping atmospheres of harmonic color. Both audience
and performers may come and go throughout the six-hour duration of the
installation. The group will play inside
· JLA
*Optional concurrent installation with or without
the group performing inside of it.
