Unseen

Year: 2022

Heading: for orchestra

Instrumentation: 2.2.2.2—4.3.4.0—timp.perc(2):vib/marimba—pft—strings

Duration: 47'

Recording:
purchased CDs will ship starting March 22, 2024
Streaming releases:
1st single, March 15, 2024
2nd single, April 12, 2024
full album, May 10, 2024

Study score:
To purchase study score ($40), click here

Recording:
To purchase CD, click here

Movements:

1 No. 1 5:34
2 No. 2 4:41
3 No. 3 4:54
4 No. 4 4:26
5 No. 5 5:41 click to listen
6 No. 6 4:02
7 No. 7 6:14 click to listen
8 No. 8 4:55
9 No. 9 4:27

Press:

[No. 7]: Jubilant remembrances of minimalism blend with the satisfying immediacy of late 20th century popular music. —The Listener’s Club

[No. 5]: Simultaneously majestic, spirited, and melancholy, this is the music of long road-trips and continuously shifting landscapes. —The Listener’s Club

Program Note:

UNSEEN (2024) is the fourth composition and recording that completes a tetralogy of work; BEING (2020), PSALMS AND CANTICLES (2021), and TIME (2022) have preceded it.

Unifying these four projects is the use of syncopated rhythms caused by the intersection of 3’s against 2’s, which through their interlocking, creates a unified rhythmic effect, or groove.  Melodies and harmonies flow from the rhythms used.

What sets UNSEEN apart from the other three is the size of the group: a full orchestra. I brought together musicians I’ve worked with in New York with the strings of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra. The scope is larger and the color possibilities more varied when writing for orchestra, compared to chamber groups. Colossal timbres can be achieved with a full brass section, woodwinds in pairs can provide scintillating pinpoints of light, and a full string section gives a sheen of richness (through the accumulation of minute pitch variation) as well as the particularity of unified bow strokes.

The title, UNSEEN, comes from the Nicene Creed “…creator of all things, seen and unseen.”  We are a visual people—we take in the world primarily through our eyes. But what we value the most are things that can’t be seen: feelings, ideas, energy, accomplishment, memories, contentment. 

What I seek in these four projects is a way for music to take us outside of ourselves.  If through its rhythms and harmonies we give up a literal grip on the now, such experience opens the potential of renewal and even a kind of cleansing joy.