Choppy for Reed Quintet
Choppy: like the aperiodic, unstable, unpredictable, interference-y waves found on lakes and oceans on windy or stormy days.
Choppy was written for the amazing Splinter Reeds (Kyle Bruckmann, oboe, Bill Kalinkos, clarinet, Dave Wegehaupt, alto sax, Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet, and Dana Jessen, bassoon) and is part of their 2019 album Hypothetical Islands. Choppy was Commissioned by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.
For each instrument in Choppy I selected a “constellation” of multiphonics that share similar fingerings, and in the beginning and ending sections I created fast-moving chorales that include every possible combination of the multiphonics. This and other techniques and textures of grew out of my own improvisations on the oboe and my mega-instrumental orchestrations of the sounds I found.