Description
Duration
Premiere
Morris Arboretum, Philadelphia, PA
Battery 4 Percussion Group
Instrumentation
Program Notes
Trax is a work based on rhythm, interval and motive that nods at different musical languages; jazz, funk, blues, baroque, romantic and modern atonal. The work began as a sax quartet, Sax Trax (1997) for the Diastema (France), Helikon (Holland) quartets Prism (US) sax quartets. Later it was arranged as a mallet quartet for the Battery 4 Percussion Group. The piece opens with pointillistic rhythms followed by a quasi blues middle section including some improvisation. Sostenuto lines give way to soloistic passages over slowly evolving harmonies. A brief transition leads into a recapitulation of the opening material where, after a momentary loss of verve, the quartet re-enters with renewed vigor and drives the piece to its close.
–Andrea Clearfield