Folds Along a Continuum for tenor saxophone, percussion, electric guitar, and piano (2020)
For some time now I’ve been fascinated by the relationship between musical form and memory. With traditional forms having lost their luster some time ago, it seems to me that fertile ground for experimentation now lies in the investigation of more complex forms, overlaid and overlapped to occupy a space at the threshold of perception. In this liminal space the listener is opened to a variety of formal architectures to be perceived — individually or simultaneously — reliant not just on their natural ability to remember but to forget as well. Folds Along a Continuum imagines time as a substance able to be traversed in all directions by way of form. As the piece moves forwards through time and folds back onto itself, apparent musical contingencies are revealed to be false and are forgotten as new material replaces the old. At the same time, materials are laid onto one another allowing the existence of multiple streams of time and memory at once. Folds Along a Continuum owes its title to the immensely beautiful poetry of Airea D. Matthews, whose coincidentally-titled poem “Descent of the Composer” you can read below