for bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, trombone, piano, bass, drums
6 minutes
written for the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble
Chicago, January 2011
Premiere
Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble
Roderick Cox, conductor
Pick-Staiger Concert Hall
Evanston, IL
March 9th, 2011
Listen
Clock Puncher mp3
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Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble
Roderick Cox, conductor
Score
Clock Puncher score
Program Note
I first started thinking about this piece while I was working a retail job in New York City. In a workplace that was both hectic and stressful, I relied on the ability to carve out little niches of levity and irony with my coworkers to get me through the day. Over time, I came to respect in my coworkers the combination of a fierce individualistic pride with a profound feeling of camaraderie, and it is exactly these two characteristics that I wanted to explore musically.
When taken together, these characteristics suggested a group improvisation, so I took as aesthetic models a handful of free jazz group improvisations from around mid-century: Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, John Coltrane’s Ascension, and Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun. Foremost in my perception of these pieces is the way time and rhythm are handled. Instead of dealing with rhythm in terms of exactitude (as conventionally notated music tends to do), proximity becomes the primary rhythmic determinant. As such, no exact rhythms are notated in the music. Approximate rhythmic ratios are indicated, as are more or less approximate points of coordination between the parts, but the actual rhythms are in the hands of the performers.
In keeping with the improvisatory nature of this approach, the actual composition of this piece occurred mostly during a very intense four-day period. If I had allotted myself more time, the conceptual and critical faculties that I normally value so highly could have interfered with the creative immediacy towards which I was striving.