Rumbling Waves

2014
/
Solo and Duo Works

Details

Category

Solo and Duo Works

instrumentation

Piano and Percussion

duration

10'

commissioned by

premiered by

Vicky Chow and Matt Evans at the MATA Festival

Purchase Score
Word by

librettist

"Memories are funny things, they suggest experiences, but those experiences are colored by one's own perceptions; while poignant, they are seldom accurate. In Rumbling Waves, Alex Weiser recalls tonality tinged with nostalgia. Traditional tonality is a narrative process, one harmony calls for the next to complete it. Weiser upends this process. Here, harmonies are born from each other, emerge from and are colored by the resonance of their predecessors, highlighted by percussion, in a counterpoint of faded melody. The overall experience is of a Constable cloud study, its colors suffused in fog, its memory hazy, yet eloquent." -Todd Tarantino

“...a cerebral and surprising duet...vacillated from the luminous to the mournful...clashed and coalesced, building toward what Weiser dubbed a “wistful” crest. But the piece truly ended when Chow threw Evans a small smile—a streak of the human beneath this electric, almost otherworldly partnership.”
The Brooklyn Rail
1
cOMPONENT divider

Rumbling Waves

Purchase Score
duration

10'

instrumentation

Piano and Percussion

premiered by

Vicky Chow and Matt Evans at the MATA Festival

commissioned by

Rumbling Waves

"Memories are funny things, they suggest experiences, but those experiences are colored by one's own perceptions; while poignant, they are seldom accurate. In Rumbling Waves, Alex Weiser recalls tonality tinged with nostalgia. Traditional tonality is a narrative process, one harmony calls for the next to complete it. Weiser upends this process. Here, harmonies are born from each other, emerge from and are colored by the resonance of their predecessors, highlighted by percussion, in a counterpoint of faded melody. The overall experience is of a Constable cloud study, its colors suffused in fog, its memory hazy, yet eloquent." -Todd Tarantino

“...a cerebral and surprising duet...vacillated from the luminous to the mournful...clashed and coalesced, building toward what Weiser dubbed a “wistful” crest. But the piece truly ended when Chow threw Evans a small smile—a streak of the human beneath this electric, almost otherworldly partnership.”
The Brooklyn Rail
2