Program Notes
“When did you realize you weren’t home?”
This line in Trevor Allred’s “Fissure” spoke directly to my heart, to my experience and that of my friends, siblings, and cousins.
We move across the country and the world, making many places our homes, pursuing education, passion, and career. A new place, a new group of people doesn’t seem like home until at some point, it does. An old home loses its feeling of familiarity and authenticity, except for moments when it doesn’t. Fissures—gaps that cannot be closed—emerge. Even if we stay in one place, others move on, loved ones die, groups of friends change. Yet we find threads that sustain us. We create families, follow our dreams and our hearts where they lead, forge our lives step by imperfect step.
In “Fissure,” sparkling, star-like plucked sounds and hollow, uncanny tapping of mallets express distance and loneliness, as if the speaker stands alone in the dark of night, looking up at a wide open sky. Lyrical two-voice melodies move in opposing and similar directions but never quite meet, suggesting unresolved longing and introspection. As momentum builds with repeated figures and circling melodies, the music fills the full compass of the piano, representing the connection between our lives and the cosmos and the pull of purpose, passion, and perhaps even fate on our lives.
This piece was commissioned by Michael Kirkendoll in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Cortona Sessions for New Music. It was premiered on May 19, 2019 in Cortona, Italy.
This line in Trevor Allred’s “Fissure” spoke directly to my heart, to my experience and that of my friends, siblings, and cousins.
We move across the country and the world, making many places our homes, pursuing education, passion, and career. A new place, a new group of people doesn’t seem like home until at some point, it does. An old home loses its feeling of familiarity and authenticity, except for moments when it doesn’t. Fissures—gaps that cannot be closed—emerge. Even if we stay in one place, others move on, loved ones die, groups of friends change. Yet we find threads that sustain us. We create families, follow our dreams and our hearts where they lead, forge our lives step by imperfect step.
In “Fissure,” sparkling, star-like plucked sounds and hollow, uncanny tapping of mallets express distance and loneliness, as if the speaker stands alone in the dark of night, looking up at a wide open sky. Lyrical two-voice melodies move in opposing and similar directions but never quite meet, suggesting unresolved longing and introspection. As momentum builds with repeated figures and circling melodies, the music fills the full compass of the piano, representing the connection between our lives and the cosmos and the pull of purpose, passion, and perhaps even fate on our lives.
This piece was commissioned by Michael Kirkendoll in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Cortona Sessions for New Music. It was premiered on May 19, 2019 in Cortona, Italy.