Orchestration:

tuba and stereo electronics

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Duration:

7' 40"

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Premiere:

Commissioned by Taylor Hicks and premiered on 11/15/21 at Central United Methodist Church, Kansas City.

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Note:

Canadian-American painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004) completed With My Back to the World, a series of six 60 x 60 inch canvases, in 1997. An abstract expressionist, her work was defined by an emphasis upon lines, grids, and subtle fields of pastel colors. Much of her most famous work from the 1960s involved large canvasses covered with nothing but meticulous graphite grids. After a break from the art world between 1967-1974, her return to painting was marked by a style not unlike her previous work, but one which consisted of bolder geometric arrangements of muted colors. With My Back to the World is considered one of her most important late works and is composed entirely of horizontal bands of blues, yellows, and oranges laid out in varying patterns and thicknesses. Martin lived much of her long and productive life in solitude in a series of adobe houses she built herself in New Mexico and I feel that her work has become increasingly relevant to the distanced world we have all found ourselves in.