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PROGRAM NOTES
Laurel Zucker and I have been fans of each other's music for many years, and I'm honored that she has recorded several of my compositions for Cantilena Records. In August 2022, at the exhilarating first NFA convention after the 2-year pandemic hiatus, Laurel invited me to participate in a commissioning series she was cultivating to build (and record) more repertory for two flutes and piano.
While collecting musical ideas for the new trio, I happened to vacation in a Southern California neighborhood rich with "blue" jacaranda trees. My attention is easily seduced by jacarandas – their florets are deep lilac colored, they seem to always be in full bloom, and most entrancing is the interplay between their foliage and light passing through. This creates an illusory dazzle like Seurat's pointillist paintings whose dappled colors are teasingly punctuated by glimpses of blank canvas.
Staring at the jacarandas, I was lured to find a way to simulate these traits musically, and the combination of two flutes with piano seemed ripe. The new trio would have a translucent feel, a rich palette of sound colors, thin textures full of energetic rhythm, and lots of imitative entrances between the instruments teasing at when the second player would enter, mimicking the first.
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