Things that drift ashore: concerto for piano and ensemble

The concerto, as a musical genre, exists as a dialogue between compositional experimentation and musical tradition. While the formal structures of concerti have expanded and developed, the relationship between soloist and ensemble (that the concerto represents) has remained stable. I sought to utilize three points of interaction within the concerto form to explore the changing relationships between those two musical bodies. The main interactions outlined in Things that Drift Ashore (concerto for piano and ensemble) are between the piano and soloist, the piano and ensemble, and the piano with itself, which allowed me to explore my own relationship with the piano as the large-scale narrative. These are accomplished through concepts of orientation, disorientation, and initiation to represent the interactions of the ensemble and the soloist. I sought to explore how the ensemble and the soloist are two objects that orient towards each other and the dialogue that orientation created. The use of the piano concerto and the situation of the piano within the ensemble, both as contributor and outcast, allows for the innate narrative of this piece to work introspectively as well. The soloist as a body that exists both within the ensemble and outside it invites embodiment as a core method of delivering the piece’s narrative structure. The connection of gesture and sound represented a metamorphosis of the body, inspired by the music of Clara Iannotta and Simon Steen-Andersen and the art of Junji Ito. Ito’s grotesque and macabre art includes characters whose visible disfigurement represents a flaw of the body. The concept of the body, and its disfigurement, is represented sonically through the piano and the visual contortions of the performer. Lastly, the relationship between the piano and itself stems from the use of a second piano that uses internal performance methods, such as metal singing bowls, glass tumblers, and horsehair and fishing line bows, modeled after C. Curtis Smith and Stephen Scott. As a pianist, this allowed me to further engage with the relationship between the soloist and the piano as a combined musical entity.