buzz

BUZZ (2001) Purchase Online

Premiere: September 22, 2001, Ensemble X
Duration: 7’

Instrumentation: Clarinet, Violin, ‘Cello, Piano

Program Note:
Buzz is built from two ideas – one slow, meditative and perhaps a bit melancholic, and one fast, frenetic, and overtly “buzzing.” To my mind and ear there is the subtle (or maybe it’s not so subtle . . .) underlying suggestion of an updated, “crunchier,” more muscular and acerbic Flight of the Bumblebee, and like that classic encore, Buzz is often light on the wing and virtuosic. There is also, however, a hint of something both darker and weightier, particularly in the slower passages but also in some of the denser areas of the fast ones. Such plays of contrast – fastness and slowness, lightness and gravity, virtuosity and expressiveness – impel the work, generating both its substance and impetus.

Or, “Buzz,” ‘cause it does.

– James Matheson