When this blog entry is posted, I will be in Houston for the AGO National Convention. A forthcoming composition is being performed Thursday evening and I am delighted that I will be there for its premier.
The Evening Improvisation 5 is a combination of several different ideas. The first, one that I do like using regularly, is the tremolo. The tremolo on the organ can give pitch and rhythm without necessarily giving it pulse. Another is the spectral manipulation between sounds using the mutations and another base pitch stop. Lastly, as mentioned in a previous post, I explore ideas that I find interesting while making them my own. This improvisation is, in a my thinking, I-V-I, or D-A-D as the central areas of exploration. The function and relation of these areas is based on their tonal relationship, but not in a functional way. Simplistic movement like this is helpful when other aspects are quite complicated.