Playground of the mind
Commission
Dr. David Cook and the Millikin University Clarinet Studio
Instrumentation
4 Clarinets in B-flat
Bass clarinet
This work may be played as a clarinet quintet or a clarinet choir with multiple players on each part.
Duration
4 minutes, 30 seconds
Perusal score
Dr. David Cook and the Millikin University Clarinet Studio
Instrumentation
4 Clarinets in B-flat
Bass clarinet
This work may be played as a clarinet quintet or a clarinet choir with multiple players on each part.
Duration
4 minutes, 30 seconds
Perusal score
Purchase
Program note
Playground of the Mind is inspired by conversations I had with David Cook about what the collegiate clarinet choir can do, from the pedagogical opportunities to the power of a vibrant gathering of clarinet personalities. The handoffs of motives between parts, intervallic content, and layering of independent musical lines are all inspired by David’s studio teaching work, and I hope that the experience of playing it is playful and warm—fun above all else.
I wrote this work in July 2021, feeling weighed down by the ongoing isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic but at the same time highly attuned to the vibrating energy of summer. Much of the fun I was able to have for the previous 18 months had been a lonelier kind of fun, the kind driven by playing with ideas in my mind. I’m fascinated by the sensation of realizing I’m thinking about an idea—that I’m in the middle of a spinning carousel in which snippets of half-thoughts have begun to latch onto each other without me even intending them to do so. It is a rush when I realize the ride that’s happening, and I love it. This work explores the joyful “Aha!” I experience when I realize that ideas I’ve been exploring are connected in ways my conscious brain didn’t clock at first. The motives that form the seeds of this work (tremolos, 3-note staccato interjections, slurred pairs of eighth notes) return throughout, layered together, glued together, twisted, and stretched, like exploring the parts of a toy, fresh out of the box, without reading the instructions for how to assemble it first.
Playground of the Mind is inspired by conversations I had with David Cook about what the collegiate clarinet choir can do, from the pedagogical opportunities to the power of a vibrant gathering of clarinet personalities. The handoffs of motives between parts, intervallic content, and layering of independent musical lines are all inspired by David’s studio teaching work, and I hope that the experience of playing it is playful and warm—fun above all else.
I wrote this work in July 2021, feeling weighed down by the ongoing isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic but at the same time highly attuned to the vibrating energy of summer. Much of the fun I was able to have for the previous 18 months had been a lonelier kind of fun, the kind driven by playing with ideas in my mind. I’m fascinated by the sensation of realizing I’m thinking about an idea—that I’m in the middle of a spinning carousel in which snippets of half-thoughts have begun to latch onto each other without me even intending them to do so. It is a rush when I realize the ride that’s happening, and I love it. This work explores the joyful “Aha!” I experience when I realize that ideas I’ve been exploring are connected in ways my conscious brain didn’t clock at first. The motives that form the seeds of this work (tremolos, 3-note staccato interjections, slurred pairs of eighth notes) return throughout, layered together, glued together, twisted, and stretched, like exploring the parts of a toy, fresh out of the box, without reading the instructions for how to assemble it first.
