Passage of a Smile is inspired by a work of the same name by the French Surrealist painter,
Yves Tanguy. I was struck by the unsettling familiarity of Tanguy's landscape, like staring
at a desert on an alien planet, or somewhere deep underwater. I wanted to evoke that
strangeness in a musical landscape.
This piece is built on a series of 'fake' harmonic spectrums, consisting of imposed intervalic
patterns (eg. 2 perfect fifths, 2 diminished fifths, 2 perfect fourths, 2 major thirds, etc.). These
spectrums come in and out of focus throughout the work.

Passage of a Smile

Conductor/Composer

Sometimes I'm serious, but most of the time I'm not

Passage of a Smile

Isaac Page