Livestream WORLD PREMIERE of “Groove, Meditation, and Fugue” with Salastina

Come join Los Angeles’s chamber music jewel, Salastina, for a night of world premieres of composers under 30 from around the globe. The livestream will be available at : https://www.salastina.org/concerts/happy-hour-no-124-sounds-promising-part-1

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Program Note:

Groove, Meditation, and Fugue is a piece I always wanted to write—a chamber composition that genuinely fuses my interdisciplinary musical background as a performer, improviser, multi-genre composer, and stargazer.

The piece sports a catchy main tune with a head-banging beat equally fit for the piano trio (violin, cello, piano) as well as a rock band. Following the tune, each instrumentalist takes their turn as the featured soloist, borrowing from tradition of American jazz. Subsequently, the spontaneous quality of the solos seeps into the rest of the composition, allowing for the performers to stretch rhythms and textures with rubatos and aleatoric patterns.

The idea for the meditation came to me in a dream, on the edge of consciousness in the early morning. Upon realizing I had just dreamt exactly the contrasting section the composition needed, I whipped myself out of bed and meticulously transcribed my inner thoughts directly into the score. The resultant music takes on a starry-eyed introspection that epitomizes the ever-present cosmic themes of my compositional oeuvre. The melody passes from the piano, to the cello, and then in its most intimate form to the violinist, who hums the tune against the serene instrumental backdrop.

After a brief glimpse of the night sky, we launch off into a fugue, inspired in part by etymology—the Latin fugere, meaning “to flee,” or in context, “to take flight.” The music combines the grounded quality of the groove with the otherworldly-ness of the meditation to form a satisfying synthesis. In the end, the piece rockets toward an exciting coda, where the trio reprises the groove in a raucous, unabashed celebration.