"Two-Faced"
Instrumentation:
alto saxophone, percussion
Duration:
approximately 9'
Dates of Composition/Revision:
July - September 2003
Premier Performance:
November 6, 2003 - Temple Ohabei Shalon, Brookline, MA The Yesaroun' Duo: Eric Hewitt, alto saxophone; Samuel Z. Solomon, percussion
Score:
available for purchase for $25 (ships in 1-2 weeks)
Recording:
Live demo recording available by special request. (Contact the composer.)
Notes:
"Two-Faced" was written on a request from the Yesaroun' duo.
From the original concert program (11/06/03):
The title of "Two-Faced," for alto saxophone and percussion, can be taken in any number of different ways, including many that may not have been foreseen by the composer! Among other possibilities, "Two-Faced" can be an apt description of the behavior of a composer who has something urgent, and not always particularly "nice," to say in music, but must nevertheless strive to be diplomatic and accommodating when attempting to get his or her music performed. Musically, this piece contains some analogies to the composer's dilemma in that the saxophone repeatedly attempts to find a familiar and friendly way to say what it has to say, but the material keeps turning unexpectedly thorny and jagged, in repeated diplomatic failures.
The rhythmic structure of the piece, articulated most clearly in the percussion, is cyclical, but with the strange feature that each cycle is almost always shorter than the previous one. Thus, after a brief introduction, we first hear an extended cycle that is more than a minute long, but by the end of the composition, many shorter cycles later, rapid-fire "cycles" of a sixteenth-note or less in length are exchanged between the saxophone and the percussion. Finally, this is suggestive of a third possible reading of the piece's title: The compression of the musical materials results in a merging of the two instrumentalists' roles into a single "two-faced" monster!
