Spires (2010) - For Woodwind Quintet

Instrumentation For Woodwind Quintet Composed for Chamber Music Campania Program Note “Spires” was inspired, in part, by Julie Mehretu’s artwork “Berliner Plätze” (2008-09), a drawing using ink and acrylic on large canvas depicting a web of layered architectural blueprint drawings of buildings in Berlin as seen from different viewpoints. The result is an obscured grey texture with varying areas of intense density, with recognizable elements of the buildings occasionally jutting out in these parts from the web-like background texture. “Spires” for brass quintet is inspired by the textures and concepts of Mehretu’s artwork. Spires are architectural structures rising from the top of buildings that jut into the sky. Just as spires reach from a building into the sky, key pitches and elements of the piece emerge to the foreground from a chaotic musical texture of trills. Like the architectural drawings of Mehretu, the music is continually rotated and viewed from different vantage points.