solo instrument

Additional Information

Written from August to October of 2015 at the request of Finnish cellist, Anssi Karttunen, this work is dedicated to him. Additional thanks are due to Theresa Wong, composer/improviser/cellist who showed me the clothespin technique back in 2012. In Envoi I this technique is used as part of the larger compositional unfolding that takes place throughout the work.

Additional Information

When I wrote my Culs-de-sac (en passacaille) for string quartet in 2009, it was evident to me that I should develop the sonic soundscape that I have created in that piece. I have decided that I write a cycle of compositions for string quartet and its subsets.

Parti… marks the third piece that I completed in this cycle. In naming this piece I have thought of two things. First of all, it is an homage to a work by Johann Sebastian Bach (i.e. Partita) which, after nearly three centuries, remains to be a rite of passage for all violinists. As I composed this work, I could not help but think of the magnitude of the influence that the masterpiece had on me as a composer.

Then the title signifies “the beginning” or “starting up,” as the French word “partir” may suggest. This work indeed begins the entire cycle. Yet the signification does not stop there. In 2002 Mahir Cetiz, composer and good friend of mine, wrote an orchestral piece entitled Left. Even though he now considers the work juvenile, in listening to the piece I felt that the work possessed such a grand force of creativity that would guide Mahir in years that followed afterwards.

I thank Ari Streisfeld, violinist of JACK Quartet, who premièred the preliminary version of the work in New York. I also thank Maja Cerar who premièred the second preliminary version of the work. The current version reflects the première of the revised and final version in Takefu, Japan in September 2015 by Yasutaka Hemmi. Without their generous advices I would not have seen the work finished in its current version.

Parti… is dedicated to Ari Streisfeld and Mahir Cetiz.

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Spargens was commissioned by trombonist William Lang. Its title, “spargens,” is a Latin word meaning “scattering.” It is a piece about a musical continuity being affected by various interferences, thereby creating paradoxically scattered sonic images out of such continuous musical gestures.

Many thanks are due to George Lewis for his initial inspirational remarks on trombone writing at the time I started to work on this piece. Also many thanks to the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbertide, Italy, where the creative process on this piece truly blossomed.

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Additional Information

When I wrote my string quartet Culs-de-sac (en passacaille) in 2009, it was evident to me that I should develop the sonic soundscape that I have created in that piece. I have decided that I write a cycle of compositions for string quartet and its subsets.

Tr (épilogue) marks the second piece that I completed in this cycle. Its title has a precursor; Tr for violoncello and piano, of which I took the formal scheme as a point of reference for the solo piece. I took the duo piece, stripped away the piano part, and enlarged the piece by adding musical commentaries.

As the title may suggest, I intend that this piece concludes the cycle. In the spirit of concluding the cycle, my focus in this piece was to illuminate the gestures of ‘farewell,’ in the sense that the envelope of the phrases has the conscious trajectory of fade-out.

Many thanks to Patrick McGuire who, in the symposium Creative Dialogue V, premièred the work-in-progress version as a part of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Also thanks are due to Anssi Karttunen and Magnus Lindberg, whose commentaries and feedbacks were crucial to the development of the piece.

Tr (épilogue) is dedicated to Pierre Morlet and Mark Andre.