Program Note

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Toggled Fusion was written for high school students at the 2017 California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA).  Its working title was “Pieced Together” – 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 form of the work turned into a series of patches of sounds that alternate and transform.   A hybrid of styles, some gestures may sound like artistic washes of color, some jazz influenced or groove oriented, and others melodious and song-like.