Upper West Stomp

As a composer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the experience of listening to a piece of music for the first time. What will the audience hear? How will the music make them feel? In the case of this piece, however, I found myself thinking more aobut my own day-to-day expeirence as a composer than the hypothetical audiences of the future. I was living in a tiny room on the upper west side of Manhattan, and I had just finished composing a long, slow piece throughout a long and cold New York City winter. In mid-March of that year, I found out I had the opportunity to go to the Cortona New Music Sessions, a summer festival in sunny Italy, and to write a piece for eight instruments that could play extremely loud and fast. I immediately felt inspired by the assignment, and began writing some groovy fast music that was the antithesis of the previous few months of sitting at a tiny desk in a tiny room writing slow music all winter. Writing this piece gave me the boost I needed at the time, and I hope that some of that energy is transferred to you as well! The piece is in three contrasting sections, each structured around an opening ostinato in the low saxes that gets passed around the ensemble, stretching and morphing as the piece progresses. This piece was written for the Cortona Sessions for New Music, July 2015.