Escaping Continuum

Escaping Continuum shares its title with a painting by my friend and collaborator, Linda Cichan, who created her work in the aftermath of a personal tragedy. The painting's vivid brushstrokes, luscious contrasts, and sincerity of expression were deeply moving to me. I saw in the work a mercurial struggle characterized by darkly obsessive cycles and impassioned, explosive gestures - a piece as likely to lose itself in relentless spirals as it was to lash violently outward. I also saw, however, a palpable hope in her painting. Amidst its gradation from murkiness to light, the piece's primary gesture appeared to be an act of hurling away a mass of tortile darkness. I sought to pit two kinds of music against one another in my piece: the first darkly romantic and melodic, the second machinelike and repetitive. The two ideas attack one another throughout, cannibalizing each other from the inside out - yet in doing so, they find unlikely ways to coexist. Despite being cast in a broad arch form, the piece seeks to move from a place of turbulent anger and inwardness toward an ultimately cathartic place of resolution. Escaping Continuum is dedicated to my brother, whose presence has been a continual comfort and stabilizing factor in my life. The piece was written January 2020 in Shanghai, China.