Sketches for string orchestra [2002]
This work was commissioned by Janet Jensen for her enthusiast orchestra. As I was thinking about the challenges of writing for an enthusiast orchestra, I thought about how to write an approachable work for both the orchestra and their likely audience that would still engage my persistent interest in form and rhetoric. The piece is written as seven very short movements, each deliberately incomplete or fragmented in different ways: an accompaniment without a melody, a movement that haltingly works its way through a single phrase, an obsessive, sheering canon at the eighth note on a short theme, etc.
performances
All-University Strings, Janet Jensen, dir.; Madison, WI (Fall 2002)