Continous Interior (2022)
FOR vibraphone and string quartet
OR
For Vibraphone and Electronic Playback
Program Notes
Imagine walking through a shopping mall, a large warehouse, an airport terminal, Ikea. These are spaces with seemingly no end or beginning. They unfold in one unbroken path, creating a sense of limitless interior within a bounded, enclosed space. As you walk details change, but the feeling of being within the same, vast, open space remains. This is a very modern feeling. In thinking about this, I felt resonance with the idea of moving through a musical space. I often experience music similarly: contained by the form, yet also a sense of being within one stretch of a long, continuous stream of musical thought. For my piece, Continuous Interior, I imagined a stroll through this kind of limitless space, with each movement being a stop along the way. On this walk we experience three distinct places. The first movement draws out waves of rocking strings against a ringing vibraphone texture. Long lines emerge as echoes of accented vibraphone tones float plaintively above the undulating string texture. The second movement is slow and lyrical, somewhat wistful yet also mysterious and dreamy. The final movement pushes forward with a churning, dance-like energy, reveling in the vibraphone sound against the clock-like, mechanical pulsation of the string quartet. The piece ends, certainly, but perhaps it could also go on and on.
Continuous Interior was commissioned by the Vibraphone Project with support from New Music USA and a consortium including: Aaron Michael Butler, Lindsey Eastham, Brian Graiser, Boyce Jeffries, Cassidy Lester, and Alan Zimmerman.
This work was part of ‘Contributions to the Vibrarphone: Pamela Z and Robert Honstein’ which was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.
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Recent Performances
December 17, 2023 | Sō Laboratories, Brooklyn, NY. Jake Harpster & Bergamot Quartet
October 2, 2023 | Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. Abby Fisher (solo + electronics version)
July 29, 2023 Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. Abby Fisher (solo + electronics version)
December 10, 2022 Center for Mallet Percussion Research. Kutztown University, PA. Abby Fisher & Bergamot Quartet.