Premiere: December 8th, 2015, University of Miami Clarke Recital Hall, by Keith Peterson

 

Duration:  ca. 9 min

 

Program Note:

 

In John Schlesinger’s film, Midnight Cowboy, the hero, Joe Buck, takes a journey from Texas to New York to Miami. As an undergraduate in Miami into my master’s degree at Rice University in Houston, Texas, my journey was the exact opposite from that—Miami to New York to Houston. Although I share little to no traits with Joe Buck’s character, the film’s idea of Miami as a final destination or “resting place” is compelling. That end destination, the fountain of youth with palm trees in the gas stations, was the place I started my career as a composer. Now I view Texas as a new frontier, not a restrictive, backwards homeland as Buck sees it. In that way, any place one goes is simply the next step in their life. With three mini-movements built into one continuous piece, this work documents the backwards journey through these three different cities, as well as the exhilaration and anxiety of transporting and uprooting oneself to a totally new and unknown place and adapting to its culture. I capture unexpected elements and vignettes from each city—a momentary surreal second in a South Beach club with blurred bright lights in a dark, busy room, an express train turning around a trash-filled, graphitized New York subway bend, and the open plains and urban sprawl of the Houston highways.