Four Sigils for Brass

This piece is meant to explore the concepts of obscurity and remoteness in a set of brief dialogues. In featuring the double-bell horn and a microtonally-capable trumpet, two very similar but beautifully different instruments that can direct sound in up to three directions, it became a defining feature of each of the four movements to take small fragmentary ideas and present them in a multiplicity of ways. While exact repetitions of themes do happen, more often the music warps, wanders, bends, distorts, and recalls, as if some original message or confession has been obscured by distance, translation, or antiquity.

In writing this piece, it was exhilarating to have the opportunity to not only work with Marco Blaauw (trumpet) and Christine Chapman (horn), two musicians whom I have a tremendous respect for, but to also write for Christine’s truly unique instrument that I first discovered nearly a decade ago. Yet with that, it was equally devastating to know that a family gathering would preclude me from attending the premiere and all in-person collaboration at the Peabody Institute. It was probably the tension between these sentiments that contributed most to the emotional character of the piece, but it was also shaped by an approach to writing that abandoned my normal architecting of structure and pattern and instead relied on intuition. The resulting music seemed to capture a sort of kaleidoscopic strangeness unified by esoterica, and thus seemed best described as a set of symbols, hence “Four Sigils for Brass.”

Aesthetically speaking, the four movements are inspired by a collection of four rocks (three fossils and one piece of flint) that were found with my former professor and endeared mentor, Michael Alec Rose, during a morning hike we shared in Percy Warner Park (Nashville, TN, on November 21, 2021).

Four Sigils for Brass is respectfully dedicated to Marco and Christine, who have both shown an incredible generosity of time, knowledge, and care with the whole collaborative process.

Performance Time: 13’00”