i urge the moment forward is dedicated to the pianist, Geoffrey Burleson.
Fear defines us
Defines our borders
Furnishes our state
Holds us down
And Blinds
I urge the moment forward
For another
More valuable one
Is waiting
Like sand
To fall through my fingers
Although the title for this piece is taken from a poem of mine, there is no programmatic intention in what unfolds as sound: any or no relationship to the title and the sounding music is forged at the discretion of the composer, performer and listener. Despite this statement, there is an unfolding of material that manifests through contrasting sections of music to hopefully provide the listener with a compelling experience even without programmatic intent. It is the interplay between and within these sections that is the narrative content of the composition.
The material used here stems from, among other sources, self-borrowed and enhanced materials from the piano material found in ‘intoxicated by escape’ for soprano saxophone and piano and ‘each changing’, for E-flat Clarinet which itself was appropriated and adapted from the violin part in ‘always searching for home’ (2020), compositions that immediately preceded this, and where those materials were themselves self-borrowed and transformed from the violin 1 part of the 2016 string quartet, ‘observation 5’. In addition, a bar of material self-borrowed from ‘liquid music’ (2017) for B-flat clarinet, is much expanded and developed in these pieces.
