Conscious Streams, Op. 25

Wesley Thompson

37 views

Pierrot

2022

7 min.

Cello

Clarinet

Flute

Piano

Violin

Program Notes: Conscious Streams experiments with unexpected and abrupt changes to mess with a listener's expectations in a (hopefully) humorous manner. Here is my program note for the piece: You know that thing that authors do where they just write out their thoughts in an endless stream without really thinking about what comes next and often they form very long run-on sentences or have sudden changes that don’t really make sense like BAM there’s a cat in my office and he’s chasing a grasshopper. I may or may not have just been playing Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defúnte before I started this piece and I just really love that work and wanted to write my own pavane but then I got to thinking “well, I tend to write a lot of serious music and this is no different so what if I also tried to make the audience laugh” and then things got very Webern-y and when things get very Webern-y in a piece that is already pretty Ravel-y you know you’re in for an emotional rollercoaster so buckle up folks and get ready for a ride. Lettuce.
Recording Notes: Conscious Streams was written for the 2022 Brevard Summer Music Festival and was premiered on August 5th, 2022, in Parker Concert Hall by Alex Tedrow (conductor), Alexandra McGuire (flute), Aaron Lipsky (clarinet), Noel Medford (violin), Elliot Wells (cello), and Ting-Ting Yang (piano).
Record Label: n/a
Ensemble Name: BMC New Music Ensemble 2022