Fivemind Reeds premieres A Sunward Tilt
On Saturday May 24th, Fivemind Reeds premiered my new reed quintet A Sunward Tilt. The piece was selected as a winner of Fivemind Reeds’ 2024 Call for Scores Competition. The concert, which features 6 other new and recent works for reed quintet, was live streamed here. On the day of the premiere, I want to share how I am thinking about the piece now, an evolution I documented as I was putting the finishing touches on last fall.
The title A Sunward Tilt refers to the astrophysical phenomenon that produces our seasons—in this specific case summer, which happens when your hemisphere is more tilted toward the sun.
I am from (and this piece exists in the context of) the pacific northwest, which has a very different relationship to the sun than Southern California (where the piece is premiering). Up there, we have two main and lopsided seasons—the 6-9 months of grey gloom and rain that we are known for; and the 3 months of near perfect weather—sunny, dry, and mid 70s—that is our best kept secret. Both seasons lend themselves to very different ways of living—one indoors, cozy, introspective, focused around gatherings, coffee, books, and board games; the other all about spending time outside: cookouts, road trips, hiking, camping, stargazing, and the like. The contrast in the seasons’ sizes and characters creates a certain tension and attraction between them, a challenging and beautiful aspect of living in this part of the world.
After 6-9 months of grey gloom, spring begins serving up tantalizing glimpses of the possibility of joy in the outdoors again. This anticipation builds until finally the clouds part for good at the end of June and gives that uninterrupted run of near-perfect weather. The fulfillment of that anticipation is where A Sunward Tilt begins, whose opening idea I wrote on last year’s summer solstice.
Though summer has arrived, the relative scarcity of nice weather creates a real tension that is a fly in the ointment: the pressure to make sure you’re present in every moment and using the time to do the coolest or most fun or most brag-worthy or most productive thing you can. As summer stretches on into its second and third months, sometimes you just want a day to relax, to revisit that slower more reflective way of life that is pervasive during the other 6-9 months. Those reflective moments find their way through the cracks anyway: seated at the foot of a mountain, dwarfed; standing off to the side for a breather at an old friend’s wedding; watching a meteor shower streak across the Milky Way.
The music explores these two ways of being—and whether and how they can be balanced across the year, within the seasons, and ultimately, for yourself as you go about day to day.
Of course, as I was trying to figure out what the music I was writing was about and how it was put together, my analytical brain needed to make a little infographic of the piece, so here’s that!
