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Trio
2022
Alto
Baritone
Cello
Countertenor
Keyboards
Mezzo-soprano
Piano
Strings, bowed
Tenor
Voices
- Program Notes
- Blameless Things is somewhat concerned with departure. Many of my more recent works have been oriented around extreme repetition, occupying and exhausting a given soundworld. In this work, a collection of songs without words race along at (by my standards) breakneck pace, never able to express themselves to their fullest before the next one has already started. The language is also greatly different from my last few works, being much more traditionally and outwardly tonal in its construction. The “songs” are linked together through shared harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic fragments that are never stated in full, but drive almost all aspects of the piece. The largest and most realized section, “Final Song”/ “Falling Dreams” is the origin of the piece, something I came up with in an improvisation and then shattered into numerous “genetic” fragments that make up the prior sections of the work. I had been brainstorming independent works for voice/piano and cello/piano with the absolutely brilliant musicians Marysol Millar and Jacob Resendez, but the aforementioned improvisation inspired me to create a work for our combined forces. Each song has a deliberately evocative title, but a programmatic reading is entirely up to the listener, as I’ve little interest in bloviating on about the piece any further =)