Ballet (2022)

for Reed Quintet

Often when composing (or simply listening to) music, I find myself bobbing my head along with the beats. Even in music with uneven meters and changing patterns (I became an avid fan of compound beats and mixed meters when I was in high school) I find myself moving - or at least trying to move - with the ever-changing beats, trying to predict the next meter change. It is because of this that I must often resist the urge to simply name much of my faster music "dance" (there are at least three pieces of mine that began with that word as the working title). My solution was to call the piece Ballet, which is both a less-than-clever workaround for my titling problem as well as an acknowledgement of the skill that is required to perform these funky rhythms, just as the extreme sport that is professional ballet.

Especially over the last couple of years, my sense of rhythm in my own compositions has become gradually fragmented, thinking less in meters but more in cells of rhythmic patterns. Sometimes they are predictable, other times not.

Dance to that, motherfucker.

Duration: 8 minutes

Ballet was completed in December of 2022. It is dedicated to Fivemind Reeds, who premiered the work on July 27, 2023 in Petoskey, Michigan.