About the Piece

Throughout the compositional process, I am always interested in how musical material grows from an initial spark.  In the same vain, my initial conception of a piece almost always changes as I write.  Similarly, when improvising, musicians may react either consciously or subconsciously to what they hear around them and change their style of play on a dime.  These ideas relate to the title of the piece, Emanations, in which sections of musical material emerge, sometimes suddenly, from some sort of spark.  Overall, the spacious and expansive opening eventually works to regular pulsed music that ascends to the higher registers of both instruments in stages.  The pulse is then broken down into music that resembles a bebop improvisation, with rapid runs alternating between both instruments.  A bright, syncopated unison passage comes to a screeching halt and leads to the coda, which acts as sort of a microcosm of the overall formal design of the piece.  

​