Evensong (2014)

Evensong was written in the fall of 2014 for Bonnie McAlvin, Emily Vold, and Manon Hutton-DeWys. The work was a bit of a stretch for me in a number of ways. Bonnie’s speciality is multiphonics, where two or more pitches are produced simultaneously on the flute. Not a flutist myself, I had very little knowledge about that technique, so it was a great opportunity to learn more. Eventually, I combined some sketches I had written for Bonnie with some for an earlier, abandoned work to create the melodic and harmonic material for the piece.

Early in the compositional process, though, an image appeared in my head of the three players surrounding the piano, dipping their hands to the strings in choreographed motions and producing mysterious and ethereal noises. This became the literal starting point of the piece, and the work as a whole represents a gradual move from that abstract sound world focused on timbre into the more familiar realms dominated by pitch and rhythm.