Mehretu trace

for oboe, Bb clarinet and electronics

(and alternate version for flute, Bb clarinet and electronics)

Performance by the Radius Ensemble: Jennifer Montbach, oboe and Eran Egozy, Bb clarinet

Program Note

In this piece, I sought to translate into music something of the vibrant, curved gestures and slashed markings in the abstract landscapes of celebrated Ethiopian-born, American painter Julie Mehretu. I focused on Mehretu’s Grey Paintings, a series that reflects sociopolitical unrest across the globe, from Aleppo, Syria to Fergusson, Missouri. Looking at the gestural markings in Mehretu’s works, fellow artist Glenn Ligon observes that their “sheer diversity reflects the myriad ways that people attempt to resist the forces seeking to annihilate them.”

Like a spectator at a museum might sit in front of a masterwork and sketch it, I began by tracing the markings from Mehretu’s paintings into a digital tablet. Then I used a computer program that I wrote to convert these contours into musical lines, which I continued to shape intuitively until they felt right. The fully crafted music takes form both as a score performed by players and as extended electronic sound sequences that accompany them. I was drawn to the lightness, agitation, and dynamism of the lines and gestures in these paintings, qualities I hope the music reflects.

The piece was commissioned by the Radius Ensemble and is dedicated with gratitude to Jennifer Montbach and Eran Egozy. The premiere performances by the Radius Ensemble took place on 3/7 and 3/8, 2020 in Cambridge and Fitchburg, MA. Projected images of the paintings accompanied the premieres. At different points, red markings highlighted specific gestures in the paintings just at the moment the music derived from them was heard.

Further information:

Radius@Home Encore 1 on 10/15/20: Mehretu trace virtual presentation as part of Radius Ensemble’s Season 22: Music Unbound

Images from related computer-assisted composition programs: