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This piece was composed for a music festival in Adelaide as part of the Young Composers and Performers concert. The performance in the recording is rather rough (there was even a section at the end where they nearly collapsed) because they had a lot of pieces to rehearse and had such short time and few rehearsals.

So the idea is to write for an ensemble famously known as the Pierrot Lunaire ensemble: Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano. Of course, the alternate piccolo, flute in G, bass clarinet, etc. can be used too. So I've made the flautist double the piccolo and the clarinettist double the bass clarinet.

As the title suggest, there is a middle "sweet" section in the piece that has a simple structure of A-B-A'. The whole piece is based on the materials introduced on the first page.

Interestingly, the conductor told me that when he was learning/practicing this piece, he needed less coffee as this piece substituted that for him. I guess my love for coffee is shown here too =P

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this piece.

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Lovely! I'm sensing a Reich influence here. Lot of repetition with a great groove! The piece I'm thinking of specifically is New York Counterpoint, Mov. 3. I love your spaced chords on the piano as well creating a qausi-quartal/quital harmony but not really. Very nice. As it goes on, it feels like a baroque fugue in a modern style! Its awesome! I guess my only major complaint would be to use the piano a bit more in the foreground (like with those long melodies) rather than the groovy background stuff. Mov. 2 uses the winds in a great way, those solos really fit the instruments. Mov. 3 was coloristically the most interesting. You did some nice motivic changes with the 5/8 and such and the rhythms became even more complex. Great stuff. My criticism here would be a more satisfying ending. It does a mirroring of the beginning in terms of material but gets louder and louder to a great climax, but it sort of cuts off on some dissonant chord. Perhaps something more solid to end rather than just a loud hit at the end? Really resolve the stuff don't just stop it mid-stream, which is what it sounded like for me.

Overall great work again! I always get excited when I see your works on here because they're always so good. Keep it up!

Beutiful ! 10*

Very nice job! :D 10/10, and I'm going to add this to my favorites list!

I love how complicated and thick the atmosphere presented here is, and yet it's all very well thought out! The various rhythms combined by the various instruments create a wonderful syncopation, and all the movement doesn't allow to listener to get bored for a second ;)

Thanks for sharing!

Awesome style here. Some of my latest ideas have been in this sort of Reich vein only I don't have a long enough attention span to loop quite as much as a real minimalist haha..I think you do a great job keeping a lot of interest and I would say this piece falls into that slightly minimalist, yet poppy vein. Really nice and interesting. While the performance is a little bit rough, this is no easy score to learn quickly and I think that they did a great job making a recording good enough to sell your piece to a potential performer as being worthwhile and accessible. Great work.

Thanks for the comments, guys!

@Tokkemon. Thanks for that! =D I'm glad you liked it. Hmm, I'm not familiar with New York Counterpoint at all, although I do know of the piece (clarinet orgy!). That's interesting (about the Baroque fugue) because I definitely am not thinking of that at all. Although, I do think of different phrases being played at the same time, which imo is nothing at all compared to the Baroque fugue. About the ending being a dissonant chord, to be honest, I don't hear that as a dissonant chord... That's probably why it sounds finished to me.

@benxiwf. Ah, I should go and listen to some of your works! This is definitely Minimalist influenced, and you're right, it's rather poppy (especially the intervals I love, 7th, 9th, etc.). And for that, I think it's closer to Torke. A friend of mine actually said that it reminds him of Michael Torke too. I agree, the ensemble had to learn 4 other works too, on top of trying to get this played. That recording you hear is the recording of the first time they played it without stopping (and they nearly stopped towards the end). It was quite a scary and suspenseful experience... You are sitting on the audience seat, knowing that it won't sound like you want it to sound like... not even in terms of speed or interpretation, but in terms of correct notes... Oh well, it was a great experience anyway!

This has got to be one of my favorite pieces that I've seen on this site. I like this a lot! The harmony you use is so interesting. I'm not very familiar with Reich's music, but having seen the comments on this piece, I'll have to check them out. I think I liked the end most of all. I can't get enough of that material in the beginning and it was nice to hear it end on that.

Ah...you're right about Torke...I haven't listened to him for a while..reminds me of "July" a bit now that you mention it.

Very wonderfully vibrant piece here. The theme is well used and nicely variated and accentuated by your rhythm and harmony. I hope you'll post the performance you mentioned above for us to enjoy. Thanks for sharing.