Places We Can No Longer Go, for piano four-hands (2016)
Recording forthcoming.
Program Note
This piano duet, composed for amateurs or young musicians, explores an imaginary realm that lies parallel to our own through the use of a special scale and extended techniques. In the first movement, we are mesmerized by a strange spell, one that opens up new harmonic realms and casts us into a strange land. The second movement takes a bird song to it’s absurd, self-aggrandizing extreme, introducing us to an over-inflated bird-king who squawks and proclaims his majesty to confused and hesitant heralds. In the third movement, we meet the Forgetting Tree and barely escape. In the fourth movement, we are plunged into the mysterious underworld of fungal society and communication. In the fifth movement, exhausted from the weird wonders of this imaginary realm, we escape, just barely.
This composition uses a specially designed scale – one carefully crafted to include all 12 pitches, but spaced over a two octave rather than the usual one octave rotation. The scale contains mostly whole and half steps, but a few augmented seconds, which are more difficult to navigate harmonically. The overall effect is one of modal rotation, a kind of harmonic iridescence where the modality glimpsed from one part of the scale slowly morphs into a completely different modality at another part of the scale.
Several movements are also available for piano solo.