ENS.1995.2 | 5′
Wind Quintet
I. Machine
II. Undulating Curve
Spit
Summer of 1995. I was fifteen years old. Somehow I heard about, applied for, and ended up
attending the Northwestern University High School Music Institute as a composer, where I
received my first real musical education—for the first time hearing and studying everything from
Bartok to Ferneyhough, Zappa and Zorn. The professor who introduced me to all this was a then-
unknown young man named Michael Pisaro, who would soon move to Cal Arts and become a
well-known and influential figure as a member of the Wandelweiser group. Despite our brief time
together I owe him a great deal; he was an excellent teacher.
We had the opportunity to write an ensemble piece which would be performed at a concert
at the end of the summer. I was assigned a wind quintet, about which I knew very little, with
consequences that can be seen in the original score. At the time very interested in minimalism, I
wanted to write something very harmonically simple, and the two outer movements of the piece,
Machine and Undulating Curve, consequently use only consonant pitches from the diatonic scale.
There was originally a middle movement involving clapping, stomping, and banging on music
stands that seemed fun at the time, but seems much less so in retrospect, and is not here included.
This edition has also been edited somewhat. A middle section I disliked then (and now)
has been dropped from Machine. I have added dynamics, slurs, and tempo markings that
correspond to my original intentions and the 1995 performance. Otherwise, this stands as a
performing edition of my first composition to be performed in a concert before the public, and if
it is rather slight and brief, I retain considerable attachment to its modest charms.