Theseus and the Minotaur (2014)

For two percussionists
Written for Asian Young Musicians Connection

Team

Percussion Duo

Preface

When I was approached by the Asian Young Musicians Connection to write a piece for its 2014 performance, I was inspired by composer Richard Tsang’s “Creative Musicking” approach to composition, where the performers and audience members become active participants in the musical experience. As a result, I created a board game for two percussionists where both players have to strategize in order to win the game.

Theseus and the Minotaur is based on a story from Greek mythology. King Minos of Crete trapped the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a human, inside an elaborate labyrinth. Every seven years, King Minos demanded that King Aegeus of Athens send seven young men and seven young women as a feast for the Minotaur. To put an end to this sacrifice, King Aegeus’s son Theseus came to the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. As Theseus neared the labyrinth, King Minos’s daughter Ariadne handed him a ball of string. Ariadne tied the other end of the string to the entrance so that Theseus can follow the string and find his way back out of the labyrinth after he slew the Minotaur. Theseus held on to the string as he moved around the labyrinth in complete darkness; only the sounds of footsteps from Theseus and the Minotaur can be heard.

In Theseus and the Minotaur, one percussionist plays the role of Theseus, and the other the Minotaur. The labyrinth game board consists of rooms with different textures (wood, stone, and gravel). As the players move through the labyrinth, their “footsteps” create different kinds of sounds. The players listen to the sequence of these sounds to locate and capture each other. All of the players’ moves are communicated through various percussion instruments.

Theseus and the Minotaur was composed for the Asian Young Musicians Connection, and was supported in part by a PSC-CUNY Research Fund grant from The City University of New York. Special thanks to David Jones for designing the game board, and to Sean O’Neil who helped me develop the concept for this work.

Heard

June 28, 2014: Asian Young Musicians’ Connection, Taipei National University of the Arts (Taipei, Taiwan)

Suite for Cello (2011)

Sara Sitzer, cello. World Premiere of the “Suite for Cello” at the Gesher Music Festival of Emerging Artists, June 2011.

“Whiff”, by Isodoc Dance Group, with “Suite For Cello”. In performance at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY, 2017.

Team

Cello

Preface

Suite for Cello was commissioned by Sara Sitzer for the inaugural Gesher Music Festival of Emerging Artists, which featured music that connects classical chamber music and the Jewish perspective. As my contribution to the festival’s program, this suite is both a conversation with my favorite solo cello repertoire (including music by Bach, Britten and Ligeti) as well as a conversation with the Jewish tradition itself.

The four movements of the Suite are:

• Nocturne

• Elijah and the Rabbi on the World To Come

• Shall the horn sound and the people not tremble

• Serenade

The suite contains four movements. The Nocturne and Serenade – two “night-songs” – open and close the work, recalling the cycles of sunrise and sunset, natural events that both begin and end a day of ritual and worship. The second movement retells a story where Elijah and Rabbi Baroka of Hoza’a discuss various people destined for the World To Come, where the cello portrays the many different characters in the scene. The third movement is a set of variations on the shofar’s sound, and is based on the natural harmonic series of the cello.

Heard

• June 29 and July 2, 2011, Marvin and Harlene Wool Studio Theater at the Jewish Community Center, St. Louis, Missouri.

• December 13, 2017, Isodoc Dance Group performed Whiff (Jeffrey Docimo, choreographer) accompanied by the Suite for Cello.

• October 29, 2022 (released on YouTube), Brian Patrick Bromberg, cello.