Premiere: New Music on the Point Festival, with members of the American Modern Ensemble, Middlebury Town Hall Theater, Middlebury, VT, June 14th, 2014,

 

Duration:  ca. 8'12"

 

Program Note:

 

I composed this work for the New Music on the Point Festival after a trip to John Pennekamp State Park in the Florida Keys. Pennekamp has glass-bottom boat tours out to the coral reef just off the shore of Key Largo, allowing everyone on board to see the activity of all of the reef's flora and fauna—seagrass, fish, eels, rays, turtles, jellyfish, and the occasional shark. This work captures the clarifying and magnifying nature of the glass—a high, staggered piano figure with seasick, uneven rhythms, breaks through a foggy and murky intro, revealing a bed of detailed musical figures brewing underneath. The music is like the details seen when the glass bottom cuts through the watery murk and reveals all of the sea creatures and plant life swimming, floating, and swaying underneath.