Moments Like Clouds (2026)
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Jeffrey Phillips, violin
Alicia Maiz Alonso, violin
Kylie Little, viola
James Ellis, cello
Ashlee Mack, piano
Alicia Maiz Alonso, violin
Kylie Little, viola
James Ellis, cello
Ashlee Mack, piano
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PROGRAM NOTE
Moments Like Clouds, for piano and string quartet, was commissioned in 2026 by the Burlington Lunchtime Chamber Music Series. The 19-minute work opens in a stark three-pitch harmonic environment (C, G, F#) that gradually expands by one, two, then three notes (B, A, E) to arrive at a pandiatonic six-tone sonority that undulates between pitch-centers of C (lydian), G (major), A (dorian), and E (aeolian). As the music continues, pitches from the first trichord disappear one by one until only the second trio remains at the composition’s midpoint, marked by a brief passage of unaccompanied piano. The second half of the piece reconstitutes the hexachord, with all three original tones progressively returning to the harmonic landscape en route to a final sonority that adds a seventh pitch (D), instantiated by the cello and sustained by the viola at the work’s conclusion. As piano and strings articulate these subtle, slow-moving musical transformations across the composition’s duration, a listener might be reminded of clouds shifting and drifting in the sky, gradually changing shape and connotation as moments in time become correspondingly malleable and vague.