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For Clarinet Choir, Oboe, Soprano Saxophone, Muted Trumpet, and Percussion
Duration: 30'
In March 2025, I visited my friend Ian Marcusiu over spring break, who had recently moved to Arizona. I flew into Phoenix, where he picked me up and drove me to his apartment in Tucson, two hours through the desert. In Tucson, we drove up Mt. Lemmon, watched the sunrise from Tumamoc Hill, and drove through the Saguaro National Forest. We spent a night in the Phoenix area, then drove up to the Grand Canyon and back before I had to fly back. I'd seen depictions of the desert all my life, but none of it was the same as being there - the vastness, the endless expanse, the frankly unreasonable number of saguaro cactuses. As we were driving around, I knew that I wanted to write some sort of "Desert Music", but I had to let it percolate for a while before I figured out what it needed to be.
Desert Music draws inspiration from the minimalist music of Steve Reich. It is a 30-minute work divided into fifteen 2-minute sections: a prelude, 6 day episodes, an interlude, 6 night episodes, and an epilogue. Each section has a vaguely programmatic epigram - a fragment as if from the personal diary of a traveler. The prelude introduces a series of twelve chords in the vibraphone, each of which gets its own episode over the course of the piece. The interlude and epilogue repeat this series of twelve chords. The clarinet choir provides the core sound of the piece while the percussion (vibraphone and guiro) provide contrasting colors, and the oboe/English horn, soprano saxophone, and muted trumpet function as raw, keening soloists. At times they echo each other and at times they blend together into a single voice.
The desert is many things. The desert is life and death. The desert is nothing. The desert is everything.