Description

If all you can see of a person is their outline, do you really know them?

This could be a love story, or a tragedy, or a clash between age-old rivals. It could be a tale of a mighty people rising up against that which holds them down. It could be a song of nostalgia, of wishing for opportunities that came and went and of dreams that faded with time. It could be children striking up a schoolyard friendship or two lovers realizing that good intentions can’t always save them from reality.

silhouettes represents the moments in life we experience at a distance: watching a passionate kiss from the other side of baggage claim, listening to a couple’s final argument on a train, staring at words on a screen wishing your best friend would come home. Despite the relative crystallinity of the moment, you know you’ll likely never have the whole story, and maybe that’s part of the appeal. This could be all of those stories or none of them; I know how I wrote it, but the story is yours for the evening.

Alternative program notes (I accidentally wrote two sets for this piece; these are the ones included with the score):
Everyone, I like to think, has those moments where they look across a room or an airport or at the person a few feet away and get a fleeting glimpse of what life is like for the mysterious other. Our individual senses of self can be so overpowering that we forget each human around us is experiencing the world in the first person. The reminder is often jarring. Though I have these moments occasionally in real life, it comes rushing back to me every time I look at the cover of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith, a scribbled-on picture of a couple kissing, shot at a distance. The book itself brings up questions of fate and forgiveness, but there’s an underlying theme that you can’t judge a person’s motivations for an endeavor based solely on the formal wear they’re carrying with them.

As I crafted silhouettes, I tried to keep all this in mind—to create musical vignettes representing brief exchanges that could mean something entirely different to the performers and audience than they mean to me. Each movement has its own flavor, whether evoking nostalgia, tension, or a moment of reprieve, and the piece itself is formatted rather like a book: a prologue, an epilogue, and the traditional flow of tension and release, culminating in iv. run run run. Performers should approach this piece with an inquisitive mindset; just as no two observed interactions imply exactly the same meaning, no two performances should be identical.

silhouettes was commissioned by Willis Dotson and Jared Jarvis, to both of whom I’m incredibly grateful. Each copy of silhouettes includes a movement-by-movement breakdown of some of the emotional themes I was considering as I wrote—when preparing the premiere, Willis and Jared asked if I’d share that context, and as they found it incredibly useful I’m continuing to make it available to those performing the piece.

Run time: approx. 6′. Brass parts include flutter tongue (growling is fine if you’re like me and can’t roll your R’s). C trumpet range: Bb3-Bb5. Trombone range: Ab2-Bb4. If you’d like a part for Bb trumpet instead, drop me a line using my Contact page and I’ll happily prepare you one.

silhouettes perusal (preview before you buy! just ignore the run time on the perusal cover; it’s… a little ambitious and ignores pauses between movements.)

Listen to the world premiere of silhouettes:

Past performances:

• 4/19/2019, Willis Dotson, Jared Jarvis, and Minhae Lee, East Lansing, MI
• 4/7/2019, Willis Dotson, Jared Jarvis, and Minhae Lee, East Lansing, MI (world premiere)