A Flame Out of Focus (2014)
piano and cello
for Niall Ferguson

May 2016

In a lesson with Mario Garuti, I shared this piece, which was then quite new and a big step for me. He saw the first line and exclaimed in jest, "Modern music!"

We both laughed because I thought this was very funny. Then, as he scrolled down to the next line he looked at me again and joked, "Ah no, it's tonal music!"

I thought this was even funnier. Laughs aside, it does kind of illustrate how the piece operates. I had been given an assignment to respond to a character from a painting by Picasso (it was "the pleading woman", from Guernica) and felt quite detached from it. But I found this detachment, both from the artwork and from its grisly subject matter, interesting and troubling. And so I was able to respond to the prompt, by way of investigating my non-response to it.

The piece was first performed in November 2014 at UCLA, by my dear friend Niall Ferguson on cello, and myself at the piano. In 2015, it was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

The score for this piece is available on IMSLP. Please let me know if you are interested in performing it.

Fall 2014