Color Fields is a work for solo player piano based on the idea of increasing pitch variety. The piece starts with a section built on a single pitch class, E, first as a single note, then in octaves. The second section contains only two pitch classes, A and B, and leads directly into the third section containing three notes. The fourth contains four notes, and the fifth uses a major pentatonic scale. Next, the process begins again, however with each recurrence the sections increase in length and complexity. After four repeats of the cycle, the piece is finished.

Color Fields, for Player Piano

The title, Focus, refers to the analogy between augmentation of a melody and “zooming in” and the analogy between diminution and “zooming out”. The piece consists of alternating A and B sections, where the A section features lyrical, whole-tone based thematic material and the B section contains more chromaticism and largely staccato rhythms. Each time the two sections return throughout the piece, the thematic material in the A section comes more “into focus” as its tempo decreases by half, while the material in the B section becomes more “out of focus” as its tempo doubles to twice the speed. As this process of simultaneous augmentation and diminution continues for six cycles, each recurring section is freely varied in its treatment of the thematic material, in order to create music appropriate to each particular time scale.

Focus, for Player Piano

Premiere of Kaleidoscope, Dec. 12, 2015 by LOUi, directed by Christopher Jette. Video available at: https://vimeo.com/153681108

Kaleidoscope

Three Sketches, for flute and piano, performed by UCSB Ensemble for Contemporary Music on June 4, 2013.

Movements:
I. Lines
II. Pale Sleep
III. Reflected in Water

Three Sketches, for flute and piano

Transformation (2015)

Deep Mountain Spring (2018)

Fragments of Time (Fl., Cl., Vln., Vlc., Pno., Perc.,) is inspired by the ancient, fragmentary wall-paintings found on the Greek island of Thera (aka "Santorini"). Excavations starting in 1967 revealed an ancient Minoan civilization once thrived there until a devastating volcanic eruption around 1500 B.C. submerged much of the island and buried the city under layers of ash. In studying the paintings, I was fascinated by the contrast between their current, fragmented state and the vibrant, ancient life they depict. I also found important parallels between this aesthetic of fragmentation and my own music, as well as that of many composers I admire, particularly Franco Donatoni. The piece explores a dual sound world consisting of moments of vivid colors and rhythmic motion, which represent the surviving painting fragments, with periods of relative calm and rhythmic dissolution, which stand for the fragments lost to time or under layers of ash.

Fragments Of Time (2011)

Six Mondrian Paintings, for Four Percussionists, Performed by UCSB Percussion Ensemble, May 2015

Six Mondrian Paintings, for Four Percussionists

Based on "Man with a Pipe" by Picasso, presented at Santa Barbara Museum of Art as Part of "Picasso and Braque" 2011 exhibit

Refracted Light (2012)

February 27, 2011, Sonata, for Viola and Piano. Performed as part of New Works for Viola Festival by Angela Miller and Mitsuko Morikawa, UC Santa Barbara.

dgordon