prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

I’m fascinated by prismatic musical forms: structures that continuously refract and reflect, kaleidoscopically shifting and evolving but at the same time static and unchanging. I imagine a light shined through a series of crystals and mirrors, shimmering into colorful spectra and bouncing in unexpected directions. Similarly, prisms and mirrors maps a single idea through a series of musical refractions and reflections, a set of continuous variations which is by turns textural, rhythmic, and melodic. To me, this concept of musical form resonates with the beautifully collaborative nature of writing music, in which all ideas are continually refracted throughout the course of notation, interpretation, and performance. prisms and mirrors musically enacts this refraction, with all the fragility, intricacy, and color of a prism refracting light. prisms and mirrors was commissioned by the Boston New Music Initiative as part of their 2020-21 season. It is scored for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano.

Performed December 2021 by Blackbox Ensemble
Leonard Bopp, conductor
Annie Nikunen, flute
Tyler Neidermayer, clarinet
Teagan Faran, violin
Jordan Bartow, cello
JC (Jon Clancy), percussion
Jixue Yang, piano

prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

Contemporary Performer-composer
MSM contemporary performance program 2021
Blackbox Ensemble
NYC

Integrating my musical roles as conductor, trombonist, and creative collaborator. I've worked with: 
Hamilton College Orchestra
Society for New Music
Symphoria
San Diego Symphony
Hohenfels Trombone Quartet

Each of us has a unique creative journey as artists and humans; this is part of mine.

Performance highlights: Schola Cantorum of Syracuse, Society for New Music, Civic Morning Musicals, Breadcrumbs Productions, Staten Island Arts' LUMEN Festival. Bachelor’s and master's degrees in flute performance: University at Buffalo (SUNY).

My work is my autobiography.  My work plays and questions abstraction and permanence.  The pieces reflect my education in Bauhaus architecture, my explorations of line and content, and my reaction to life in locations discovered through my continued quest for knowledge.

Studying architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, created the basis for the paintings and drawings.  Architecture and structure form the logic behind the way a painting is built and a drawing is constructed.  How do the tools used affect the making of a line or series of lines?  Each work is an answer to a question exploring how marks and gestures can be created to form a complete composition.

Understanding my place in foreign cultures plays a huge part in the development and choices made for the work created there.  Finding the balance of act and consequence within the parameters of an unknown land add the next facet of information and visual expansion.

Abstraction is not a style, but a state of mind…a balance of subtlety and boldness, confidence and risk, the known and that what needs to be found.


prisms and mirrors (2021) for pierrot sextet

Paul Novak