The Atlas (2023)
For Extended Piano & String Quartet
total duration: 1 hour

In nine movements:

1. Compass

2. SeaGliss

3. Penumbra

4. Expanse

5. Interlude

6. la terre

7. Solo

8. Cartographers

9. Journey through the Spheres

Certain movements may be performed individually, including Journey through the Spheres, la terre, and Penumbra. In addition, Journey through the Spheres can be performed as a solo piano piece.

Piano part incorporates basic percussion techniques and requires additional items for inside the piano playing, see below for full details.

Premiered by Either/OR (Jennifer Choi, violin, Pala Garcia, violin, John Popham, cello, Kal Sugatski, viola, Richard Carrick, piano) on March 9, 2023 at MIT in Cambridge MA and September 20, 2023 at DiMenna Center for Classical Music in NYC.

The Atlas was written at MacDowell, New Hampshire in January and February 2023, with sabbatical support from Berklee College of Music.

Score to be available through PSNY.

NYC Premiere Concert Review

“The result was structurally elementary. And impossibly complex. At its core, though, Atlas was a music of joy. A celebration of tales‑told, inspiration and sheer luminosity.” _Harry Rolnick

Program Note:

Maps suggest explanations, and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities.  To ask for a map is to say, “Tell me a story”

Peter Turchi, from Maps of the Imagination

 The Atlas is an hour long concert work for extended piano and string quartet in six full movements and multiple shorter interludes. The Atlas sonifies tales of exploring, belonging, revisiting, longing and blissful enjoyment. It is inspired by stories about the individual,  community, ancestry and unknown people and places. And it sonically traverses the ocean, desert,  forest, city and Home. Some of these themes were starting points for particular movements, whereas most emerged during the composition process. 

The piece begins with Compass - a piece that prompts reorientation within the piano. What happens when one uses a range of objects inside the piano? How do we hear the piano differently? What kind of music can one write when traditional tools (harmony, melody, form) as well as physical tools (hands, strings, mallets, mutes, etc) are different and less familiar? Where does it take the music?

 SeaGliss is graphically notated, and provides different opportunities for performer interpretation.  Improvisation is a strand throughout the work, invoked in different ways (small passages, embellishments during repetition, enhancing interactions, etc) throughout most movements and freely in Solo/Cartographers.

Penumbra a title inspired by a painting recently viewed at the Frank Bowling’s America exhibit at the MFA, references the outer shadow of an object, which is a metaphor to my relationship to my maternal ancestral land of Algeria, which I know only through the recordings and words of others. The central melody, as well as the basic 6/4 rhythm, references the music in the film El Gusto, which tells the story of an Algerian Chaabi band in the 1950’s made up of Muslims and Jews that were reunited in Paris 50 years later.  

la terre is a transcription of a piano piece I improvised with three separate tracks (for an upcoming CD). It does away entirely with using the keyboard and fully embraces the piano as a percussive instrument. Expanse unifies the instruments and opens a brief window to fully resonant piano and strings. Interlude is a mosaic of sound that digs deep into the resonance of the low piano strings. Journey through the Spheres references the spectral beauty of the harmonic spheres, presented tonight as the final version of a piece I premiered with my students in Neither/Nor in November 2021. Additional threads embedded in this piece include the music of Tom Waits, EDM, Jean-Philippe Rameau, John Cage, Henry Cowell, and Iancu Dumitrescu. It explores the ways in which the mechanics of the piano can blend with the strings (of both the piano and string quartet). 

Composing music for non-traditional sounds in The Atlas presented an analogy to the two step process of creating maps outlined by Peter Turchi: namely that of explorer (to identify and understand the land) and of guide (to lead others through it). The land in this case is experimenting with a combination of the sonic possibilities of inside-the-piano techniques, the vast landscape of piano repertoire in contemporary and classical music, and avant-garde, experimental, and improvised musics, alongside the string quartet immense possibilities. And then, when sitting down to write the piece “at some point, we turn from the role of Explorer to take on that of Guide.” (Turchi)

….

Scored for
Piano
2 Violins
Viola
Cello

Piano part requires

• Grand Piano (ideally with an internal frame that allows full access to strings G3-C5)

• 2 medium hard yarn mallets

• 1 hard glock mallet

• 2 e-bows

• Harmonizer (8-10 inch) *Composer specific

• 3 Rubber mutes (composer specific design for 3 string pitches)

• 4 Rubber mutes (for violin)

• Talking drum mallet

• Glass bottleneck guitar slide (very thick)

• Guitar plectrum

• additional items at performers discretion for SeaGliss