A Circle With Many Centers (2023)
for vibraphone trio
LISTEN (excerpt)
Bowling Green State University Percussion
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PROGRAM NOTE
A Circle With Many Centers, for three vibraphones, was commissioned in 2023 by the Bowling Green State University Percussion Studio and the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music. During the first half of the 18-minute work, an initial set of three pitches (B–D–C) is gradually expanded to become a six-note group (B–D–C–F–E–A). During the second half, the original pitches disappear from the hexachord one by one until only the second trichord (F–E–A) remains. Surface-level musical interactions are generated by a large-scale structure that comprises three strands of regularly-occurring waves unfolding at slightly different speeds in a ratio of 9:10:11. Bowed notes articulate the slow pulses, while struck notes occur at points where two streams coincide. The work’s title reflects an enigmatic scene in a short story by Haruki Murakami: an unnamed older man asks the unnamed younger protagonist to imagine “a circle with many centers but no circumference,” reassuring him that “your brain is made to think about difficult things, to help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first… this is the period when your brain and your heart form and solidify.”