On Sunday, July 2 at 7:30pm in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music, pianists Olga Shupyatskaya and Futaba Niekawa will be premiering my composition Crystalline for two piano and two percussion. Joining them will be Matt Witten and Chris Jones. This will be an exciting concert, not only to hear fabulous performances, but also to reconnect with alumni friends and colleagues. Click here to see the Eastman press release
When Olga approached me back in December about writing a piece for them, I envisioned a composition that would be inspired by crystals with the piano and bell-like percussion instruments (vibraphone, glockenspiel, crotales, triangles) mixing together. It is more or less a theme and variations based off of an order of pitches to represent the process of building a crystal as all of the pitches are eventually introduced in the vibraphone part. I created a line that not only provides melodic/thematic material, but also influences the harmony:
The vibraphone primarily plays the line over and over again. At then at the end of the piece, it is is retrograde before it moves forward once again. The textures in both of the piano parts and the second percussion part using bell-like and metallic sounds all work together to create a sparkling, crystal-like atmosphere very much inspired by
both Chick Corea’s “Crystal Silence” and Bjork’s “Crystalline.”