Mother Chords (Quartet Mov. I)

Graffiti: Concerto for Chamber Orchestra 4. Bubble Letters

3rd Place Winner in the 2nd International Competition of Harbin
Finalist in the 2019 Zemlinsky Prize
Finalist in the 2019 Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores
Honorable Mention in the 2019-2020 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute

Particulate matter is defined by the EPA as a potentially hazardous mixture of solid and liquid particles in the air. Growing up in an increasingly polluted metropolitan center, I found myself drawn to this image of a million airborne atomies whirling past each other, unseen yet harmful. They seemed a perfect metaphor for the chaotic soup of thoughts, reminders, distractions, and non sequiturs that flitted through my mind day in and day out. This perpetual state of mental white noise gradually became the norm as I began to learn how to focus on the tasks appointed me.

Mind Over (Particulate) Matter is about this search for focus in a world of mental particulate matter. The piece opens by bit by bit introducing the notes that make up the primary theme, scattered in near pointillistic fashion across the orchestra. Occasionally, brief moments of clarity pierce through the texture, receding into grand washes of seemingly uncoordinated harmonies. Once the theme receives its first full statement, the music takes off, struggling to recapture the theme in its complete glory. Just as it seems to find focus, the orchestra overreaches and collapses into a hazy purgatory of white noise and harmonics. Slowly, the earlier uncoordinated harmonies begin to appear, growing in intent and intensity as the music gradually builds to a massive return of the primary theme. Exploding in a statement of orgiastic grandiosity, the theme sinuously spins through several different keys and finally rushes to a dramatic close, victorious. A final epilogue recalls the pointillistic opening, this time more rhythmically coordinated, slowly subtracting notes from the main theme until the spare, Shostakovichian ending.

Graffiti: Concerto for Chamber Orchestra 4. Bubble Letters

Michael Gilbertson

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