A Meditation on Sylva (2016)
Premiered and recorded in Futura Productions by Mario Borges, Derek Cho, Holly Choe, Monica Grady, Annie Kim, Isabella Pazar Christopher Vu - made possible by the Montserrat Frontier Fellowship
Instrumentation
Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello, Drumset
About the piece
Overall, I explored the music that have imprinted me the most at the time, which was jazz-fusion, world music, and modern art music.
While staying mostly tonal, the piece is based on the motif of pitches C, Db, and Bb or pitch class (013). This motif dictates much of the harmony, scales, and tonal centers I use in this piece. The piece starts by introducing this motif in canon, which leads to an exploration of this motif in rehearsal marking A. At rehearsal marking B, the motif still exists in where the music modulates; the music goes into B minor, C minor, and A minor, all having tonal centers that reflect the (013) pitch class. In rehearsal marking F, the music goes into a fantasia based on this motif that is more apparent from when we heard it in the beginning, which builds into the section in rehearsal marking G where the melodies and harmonies reflect this motif.