Movement I – Encountering Lorca, premiered at West Park Presbyterian Church, New York, NY; October 22, 2016.
Movement II – Wrestling with the Moon, premiered at Saint Peter’s Church/Citigroup; New York, NY; December 1, 2015.
Movements III & IV – Mouth of the Sky & The Dance the Turtle Dreamed, premiered on February 21, 2017.
Encountering Lorca is the overarching title of these four movements for String Quartet. It grew out of my fascination with the poetry of Spain’s renowned poet, Federico Garcia Lorca. I was especially captivated by the range of light and dark shadings in his poems. To me, it seems to express a full spectrum of human experience, something which I’ve aspired to in my music.
I was sparked by the beauty of Lorca’s imagery and of his language (and I understand enough Spanish to appreciate it in the original). Strings of words caught in my ear, and I used them as a sort of writer’s prompt to develop the piece. The title of each movement is a quote of sorts, a partial phrase, maybe used in a different context.
As in the body of Lorca’s work, motifs recur, reinterpreted in echoing variation throughout the four movements. Each can be played individually or in new groupings.
Score Excerpts
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