Specimens

The genesis for Specimens came through a serendipitous Twitter connection, the details of which I no longer recall, but the end result is that I ended up responding to Rachel Hacker's open call for new pieces for Kingma System® flute, optionally with glissando headjoint. This opportunity was a dream come true, and I leapt at it with great enthusiasm.

The following months (late 2016 leading into early 2017) turned out to be far more tumultuous than I anticipated— personally, politically, and otherwise. Attempting to force the music out was not bearing any satisfying fruit. With a missed deadline behind me, the piece was finally eventually written in an outpouring of creative energy to finally reveal what the piece wanted and needed to be: four eclectic little cybernetic beasts for flute and electronics.

Despite making extensive use of the microtonal capabilities of the Kingma flute and glissando headjoint, the harmonic language of the suite is largely tonally derived, but embodied in a very loose fashion. I treated the composition as essentially a trio between the flute, percussive electronic sounds, and tonal electronic sounds, each of which takes the forefront at various points, but with the flautist clearly acting as a bandleader of sorts.

• prelude - a beastly infant learns to walk before falling asleep
• horo - an adolescent performs a rabid, suggestive dance
• passacaglia - a solemn, mystical ceremony is observed
• gigue - a more constrained and celebratory dance