Artwork by Constance Volk

Metasomatic: Vapors (2018-19) for alto saxophone

Metasomatic: Vapors is dedicated to and was premiered by Brandon Quarles at Northwestern on February 19, 2019, after a few months of close collaboration. Brandon helped me to navigate all of the nuances of a handful of multiphonics and the trills that may emerge when various keys are manipulated within a particular fingering. We amassed a catalogue of possibilities, which led to the creation of this piece.

The piece responds to the exploration of harmonics from Metasomatic: Bifurcations for cello solo, but the alto saxophone contributes a much more somber and pensive quality. The DNA is the same but the results are completely different—in other words, the acoustic body has been transformed. This is what Metasomatic refers to in a more general sense, but as with all the pieces in the cycle, it also refers to the parametric forms that each piece possesses: high to low, soft to loud, many to one, etc. In Vapors, one of the most salient alternations is between sound and silence, which heightens the level of awareness of the performer and the listener to very subtle changes in sound quality and minute changes in resonance.