Duration:
10 min
Movements:
I (shown above)
II
Program Note:
“Three ancient musicians hunched there – piano, guitar, accordion. None of them looked less than seventy
years old, the accordion player so frail each time he swayed his shoulders around a corner of the melody
Geryon feared the accordion would crush him flat. It gradually became clear that nothing could crush this
man. Hardly glancing at one another the three of them played as one person, in a state of pure discovery.
They tore clear and clicked and locked and unlocked, they shot their eyebrows up and down. They leaned
together and wove apart, they rose and cut away and stalked one another and flew up in a cloud and sank
back down on waves.”
years old, the accordion player so frail each time he swayed his shoulders around a corner of the melody
Geryon feared the accordion would crush him flat. It gradually became clear that nothing could crush this
man. Hardly glancing at one another the three of them played as one person, in a state of pure discovery.
They tore clear and clicked and locked and unlocked, they shot their eyebrows up and down. They leaned
together and wove apart, they rose and cut away and stalked one another and flew up in a cloud and sank
back down on waves.”
– Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
What the word “flickered” means to me, is what Anne Carson describes in Autobiography of Red as a feeling of “leaned together and wove apart.” This two-movement piece aims to express this feeling of flickering from two different aspects. The first movement is crisp, spontaneous, and unpredictable. It conveys the feeling of flickering in a visual way, in which we can almost witness the rise and fall, tide and ebb of a series of notes from the melodies. In contrast, the second movement is pensive and reticent. It is written with a deep sense of interiority, which reflects the feeling of flickering metaphorically. In this movement, we are haunted by the feeling of knowing too little but feeling too much, which leaves us in a state of profound uncertainty.
Awards:
CreArtBox Open Call for Scores winner, 2026
Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival Quartet Composition Competition 2nd Place, 2024
