Traces (for solo piano) (2005)
For solo piano
Commissioned by the Montalvo Festival for Lang Lang and dedicated to Amy Briggs
Premiered on the Evolution Contemporary Music Series (at An Die Musik)
Duration: 16 minutes
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Click to hear an excerpt from this work (Movement III. - Tango) |
Program Note by the Composer
Traces for solo piano, composed in 2006, was commissioned by the Montalvo Festival for Lang Lang. The World Premiere took place on January 26, 2009, in Baltimore, on the Evolution Contemporary Music Series (at An Die Musik) by Amy Briggs, pianist.
It is not intended that a pianist would necessarily have to play all five Traces at once. Rather, one or two Traces might be programmed on a given recital, as Traces is a collection of independent "character pieces," composed, published and recorded as a set.
The idea was to take the distant perfumes of other musical idioms (and it should be noted that there are no quotes of music by other composers in Traces) and to imagine what it would be like to cross-fertilize them. What would J.S. Bach crossed with BeBop sound like? How would Scarlatti's Baroque Ornamentation crossed with Art Tatum sound?
These works took me countless months to compose. They were fun, challenging and exhilarating to create. I composed them at a piano, note by note, playing the music at a super slow tempo over and over again.
The work is dedicated to Amy Briggs. (Impromptu is an expansion of my Piano Etude #6.)
I: Reverie
Like Robert Schumann (The Poet Speaks) crossed with George Crumb
1 minute 30 seconds
II: Caprice
Like Scarlatti's Baroque Ornamentation crossed with Art Tatum
2 minutes 30 seconds
III: Tango
Like Astor Piazzola crossed with John Coltrane
3 minutes
IV: Impromptu
Like Stravinsky crossed with Chopin and Thelonious Monk
6 minutes 30 seconds
V: Toccata
Like J.S. Bach crossed with BeBop
2 minutes 30 seconds
Augusta Read Thomas
Selected reviews
Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun
Amy Briggs brilliant in tough American piano music
Amy Briggs, Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An Die Musik
"In the space of about two hours last night, pianist Amy Briggs dove into the daunting field of modern American music -- and demonstrated the diverse richness of that repertoire in brilliant fashion.
"Her concert, a presentation of the Evolution Contemporary Music Series at An die Musik, included a couple of premieres. Traces, by Augusta Read Thomas, is a series of stylistic fusions, suggesting what would happen if you crossed Scarlatti with Art Tatum, or Bach with BeBop. Briggs made a strong cases for these imaginative, often thorny keyboard etudes, especially the austere beauty of Reverie (a supposed mesh of Schumann and George Crumb) and the intense, vibrant complexity of Impromptu (Stravinksy and Chopin meet Thelonius Monk)."
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