Blackwood Studies

Program Note

The idea of multidimensionality in music has always been of fascination to me. In a monophonic context, the perception of semi- or fully-dissociated musical materials provides a rich array in which one can play with this concept. Blackwood Studies is a work that explores this construct of dissociation and intertextuality, in how various musical strands can occupy spaces of relative independence or move towards more interdependent behavior, depending the perspective. The work initially centers around small, tightly controlled units that develop as an independent stream throughout the work; while additional streams bifurcate, interject, or emerge from this space to create new strands, and eventually subsume or coalesce into larger units. It is from this space that the work seeks to explore its own intertextuality, through the lens of inner dialogues.