Palindragram (2018)
for solo flute
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John McMurtery, flute
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PROGRAM NOTE
Palndragram, for solo flute, was commissioned by John McMurtery and a consortium of fourteen additional flutists. The single-movement work, completed in August 2018, lasts approximately seven minutes. Its title is an invented portmanteau defined in the score as: "1. A combination of the words palindrome and anagram. 2. A musical form that reverses direction at its midpoint and returns to its start via structural retrograde with some surface elements reordered." Palindragram is something of a "sequel" to Sonnet 2 (1999), which was also commissioned by McMurtery. The two works share compositional characteristics at the structural level (two strands of musical information unfolding simultaneously) as well as on the surface (certain extended techniques, and a preponderance of staccato articulation).