Program Note

Midday Hues was written for high school students at the 2017 California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA).  With less than a week to compose the piece, and only a short amount of time to rehearse it and perform it, I decided to have the students be part of the composing process.  Rather than write the entire work and then rehearse it, I instead would compose several excerpts, read them with the students, and then go back and revise the sketches, write more, and even erase some passages!  Working this way was a quite a special experience – the students’ reactions along the way had a tremendous influence on how I went about composing the next sketches.  With such a process, the work turned into an ongoing variation of one motive.  I composed much of the work during my afternoon break time in a room at Cal Arts with large windows that revealed a view of the surrounding mountains.  Such surroundings induced sleepy, clustery sounds, combined with sweet, rising and falling motives.