Five Moments in a Transparent Present

Piano and Percussion
25 minutes
Written in 2025 for Duo Refracta

Thoughts on the Piece

I wrote this “out of time” without a metronome thinking about multiple organic tempi happening simultaneously. At times, there are up to 6 layers of time happening simultaneously: from a macro-perspective in the overall form and the EBow, down to the individual hands of the performers. Multiple layers of time; multiple layers of phrasing; concentric circles in magnetic levitation as seen through the eyes of a Renaissance alchemist. All of this can easily sound like a technical exercise, but that was never my intention regardless of how fun building these systems and patterns was (and how tedious this was to figure out how to notate in a coherent way). Rather, I want the piece to occupy a single place: to transport the players and listeners to a slightly different realm, one that is as dreamy as it is juxtaposed. As if a sentimental pastorale were rendered as a cubic sculpture; as if a field recording of memories played in my head while visiting a somewhere essential or haunted to my childhood; how the mind’s eye see past present and future all at once.