Orchestration:

crotales (2 octaves), marimba (5 octave), piano​

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Duration:

10'

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Premiere:

Recorded by the Slee Sinfonietta (Stephen Solook, crotales, Tom Kolor, marimba, Wei-Han Wu, piano) as part of the 2021 June in Buffalo festival. 

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Note:

Winds Across Water was inspired by a short trip through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota during the Summer of 2020.

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As the piece progresses, each player ascends and descends a relatively fixed series of pitches which correspond to the range of the instrument. Since each instrument’s range is unique in this ensemble (Crotales, 2 octaves; Marimba, 5 octaves; Piano, 8 octaves), some pitch collections are spread across larger distances or shorter distances depending on the instrument. The contours that each instrument follows come from the paths we took through the Boundary Waters, covering miles of narrow rivers, portages, and wide-open lakes. If you were to “zoom out” on this piece, you could see the clear shapes that each player follows and how their lines and silences intersect to create the slowly developing harmonies and timbres found between all of the ringing and shimmering produced by these three colorful percussion instruments.