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Acrobats (2018)

For flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, and piano

Commissioned by The Network for New Music to recognize Linda Reichert’s 33 years of leadership
and vision as Artistic Director
Premiered by The Network for New Music, Philadelphia, PA on 29 April 2018
Bass clarinet can be substituted by baritone saxophone or bassoon.
Duration: 6 minutes

To be performed with dancers when feasible.
 

Informal reference recording

Program Note

I feel profoundly fortunate for the investments made by the musicians who are performing.

The title ACROBATS hopefully captures the spirit of the dedicatee of the composition, Linda Reichert, who is radiant, elegant, brilliant, graceful, fun, beautiful, generous, sophisticated, and positive. I am grateful for her magnificence, twinkle, positive energy and skill at the many “gymnastic feats” she has performed for contemporary music-at-large.

I care about craft, clarity, and passion. My works are organic and, at every level, concerned with transformations and connections. The carefully sculpted musical materials of ACROBATS are agile and energized, and their flexibility allows a way to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed — at times whimsical and light, at times jazzy, at times layered and reverberating.

Across ACROBATS 6-minute duration, there unfolds a labyrinth of musical interrelationships and connections that showcase the musicians in a virtuosic display of rhythmic agility, counterpoint, skill, energy, dynamic range, clarity, and majesty. Throughout the kaleidoscopic journey, the work passes through many lively and colorful episodes, never losing its sense of dance, caprice, and effervescence.

 
 

Linda Reichert, Artistic Director and co-founder of Network for New Music
 

Golden Dragon Acrobats

To obtain examination or performance material for this
Augusta Read Thomas work, please contact Nimbus Music Publishing.