Thread, unfurled (2016)
Flute and piano
Duration: 8’30”
Commissioned by Duo Axis (Zach Sheets, flute, and Wei-Han Wu, piano) with support from NewMusicUSA
Premiered March 15, 2016 at Ciminelli Formal Lounge, Eastman School of Music, NY
Duo Axis
In some caves on the other side of the world, there are glowworms that spin a silky, luminescent thread. Chains of bug-made starlight hang from invisible ceilings and lure other tiny cave dwellers into their viscous dew. I imagine very still columns of light in the dark with occasional ripples from trapped victims — not a violent disruption but more peaceful, like pebbles in water. In Thread, unfurled the flute and piano whisper and drip and sigh downward together with brittle fragility. This piece is written for and dedicated to Zach Sheets and Wei-Han Wu, and was commissioned with generous support from the Tallon Perkes Scholarship Fund and New Music USA.
Press:
“Scored for flute and piano, it is a spellbinding work that opens with a nervous energy that soon subsides into relative stillness...The transfixing sounds became the musical equivalent of thousands of random, iridescent flashes of light that punctuate the dark.”