Quilts (2016)

For two drumkits, synthesizer, and maraca

— written for Tigue

I wrote Quilts in 2016 to play with my percussion ensemble Tigue. The music was written while in residence at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art during the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and was an ecstatic response to the simple yet engrossing wall drawings and conceptual structures of Sol Lewitt that line Mass MoCA walls. Using Euclidean rhythms (an expression of n events across m positions) I was able to algorithmically express structures of density through time, creating an immersive and percussive composition that gains intensity to the end. Like Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings, logical systems govern the form of the composition, layering a small collection of rhythmic material in alternating permutations until all have been expressed. I find that these logical systems are similar in expressive capabilities to our understanding of chord qualities, when accepted as the music’s defining language, where certain rhythmic densities are dissonant and others are consonant. Ultimately, the composition was written to be a transcendent celebration of rhythm, a whirling declaration of pure neon energy. After teaching the music to the members of Tigue using simple “cheat sheet” scores with rhythms and formal structures, the piece quickly became one of our most performed compositions, a cornerstone of our sound, and a work we performed throughout the United States and Europe over multiple seasons.