Skipping Stones at the Pond - Evan Erickson

Hello,

The piece I am sharing with you all today is my latest work out of everything. I wrote and premiered it with my chamber group. I really pushed myself to make more harmonically interesting music while still making it my own. I could not do as much with rhythms because of our group's skill level, but I think this is my coolest chamber work to date.

Let me know your thoughts and comments! Thank you.

Link to the performance: 

Cool polyrhythms!  They do kind of emulate the impression of multiple skipping stones on a pond.  I like the melodic fragments you pepper throughout the piece in between the ostinati.  There is also much interplay and imitation between the different instruments taking each other's parts at different times.  I wonder what the stomps are meant to represent?  Maybe that's the point at which the stones stop ricocheting and finally fall into the water?  That's really creative if that's what it is.

I noticed that you chose to use a piccolo instead of flute in this piece.  It sounds really metallic and shrill most of the time to me.  I wonder what your motivation/thought process is behind that choice and how it would sound with a flute on that part instead.  Thanks for sharing!

P.S.:  I also noticed that you've solved your problem with finding adequate titles for your music by composing it with programmatic content in mind which I think is a good strategy!

Lovely piece, where every instrument has its personality. I particularly like the contrast between the bassoon and the piccolo.

It's true that the piccolo sounds distorted sometimes, but I think its a matter of the recording.

Hmm not my style at all, but:
• The recording sounds nice!
• The ambient you create doesn't convince me at first but keeps getting me in second by second.
• The parts I liked the most were the "tutti" sections. There I feel things moving, dunno where, but they are moving.
• The tempo indication on the 2nd part really won me and interpreters played it accordingly.
• The score seems well written BTW; I am glad you put it both in the video and here as a downloadable file.
• Unlike Peter I don't see the relation between the title and the piece that clear, but this is likely due to my exhaustion at this very moment. 
Overall it was interesting to listen to it (twice at least iirc, the time I use for writing a comment can be used to replay :B).

Kind regards!