Storm of the Eye
About this Piece
A projection of phosphenes and phantom images boiling inside the vitreous chamber, weather systems in miniature transposed down into the audible spectrum. Extended violin techniques used in Storm of the Eye allow the violin to become other instruments: percussive, electronic, sometimes undefinable, especially when combined with the piano’s output. However, when needed, fragmented hints of dark melody emerge from the maelstrom. A mini-concerto, Storm of the Eye’s nine sections are like time-slices cut from the arc of larger processes. Storm of the Eye was composed during a residency in 2009 at Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. The processes at work in this piece are core elements of my formal music. These strategies may also be heard in such recent pieces as The Boreal, composed for JACK Quartet, On Corlear’s Hook for Radiosinfonie Frankfurt, and Occam’s Razor for double string quartet.