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for solo piano and electronics duration: 8 minutes |
Commissioned by/Premiere:
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Red Light New Music / Yegor Shevtsov November 2, 2010 at Rockwood Music Hall |
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Purchase from Project Schott New York |
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Hoyt-Schermerhorn is a tribute to the New York nightscape. Named after a subway station in Brooklyn where I have spent many a night
waiting for the train, the piece explores the myriad and contradictory feelings that often come to me late at night in my city of choice—
nostalgia, anxiety, joy, panic. Originally, Hoyt-Schermerhorn was originally conceived as a graphic score. In the original version, the pianist was allowed to choose sonorities chosen at the beginning of the piece are at the pianist's discretion. By doing this, I was trying to capture a kind of automatic or intuitive texture. However, eventually I decided that it was my intuition that I wanted; to create improvisatory and almost aimless texture, I actually had to work quite intensely and diligently to create what I desired to sound like effortless improvisation. This section slowly transforms into the second half of the piece, a (mostly) soft and gentle lullaby, coated with a shatter of fragmented electronics breaking the quiet haze. Hoyt-Schermerhorn is dedicated to Yegor Shevtsov, for whom I composed the work. It is my pleasure to work with him on a solo piece for the first time after all these years working together in Red Light New Music. |