Still/Alive (2021) for bassoon solo

Still/Alive was premiered in July 2021 as part of the virtual International Double Reed Society Symposium. You can see the archived video here.

There’s a lot of story behind Still/Alive. It’s the first real piece I was able to write during the pandemic and it’s the first real piece I wrote after my son Mateo was born. It was written for Ben Roidl-Ward, who is in my opinion one of the best new music bassoonists on the planet, and without whom I could not have written this piece. Ben lent me his high school bassoon and I taught myself to play, albeit badly, mainly to become comfortable with fingerings and manipulating the embouchure to unlock different zones of various multiphonics. This exploratory phase was essential for me to understand, at the very least, the mechanics of this acoustically enigmatic instrument, and many of the sonorities I found along the way made it into the final piece.

This is a piece that explores the tension between sudden juxtapositions and gradual change. Alternations between the highest register and gravelly multiphonics mediated by volatile bass lines create a sense of disarray. As the piece evolves, obsessive loops are formed and cells of materials are repeated and degraded through violent accelerations towards untenable speeds. The piece gradually shifts in emphasis from this highly gestural material to beating dyads nearly frozen in time, which trigger a different mode of listening. The title comes from the experience of these different kinds of time, times of overwhelming stimulation and activity, when there never seems to be a break, and times of meditation, stillness, and self-reflexiveness.

This piece was supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.