Tides and Currents

Timo Andres

General Info

Year: 2016
Duration: c. 15:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Andres & Sons Baker
Cost: Print Version - $135.00   |   PDF Only - $85.00

Instrumentation

Player I:
Player II:

2 Pianos

Program Notes

I don’t think explaining one’s writing process usually does much to illuminate the resulting work, but in the case of Tides and Currents, which formed from structured improvisation, this process represents a marked difference from the way I’ve written all of my other music to date. I’m not much of an improviser, either in performance or as part of the composing process. However, I think improvisation can sometimes achieve a more natural sense of progression and development over a stretch of time than my usual, painstaking note-by-note routine. That’s why I used it as a starting point for Tides and Currents, in which I wanted to give large reverberant instruments a sense of geological change over a relatively short timespan.

Improvisation was only the first step, though. After I’d recorded several layers of prepared piano—hilly figures churning through the circle of fifths—I overlaid them at different periodicities, so their peaks and valleys would clash unpredictably. Then I “quantized” or aligned them to a regular rhythmic grid. The resulting material, organized into a long crescendo, became the first half of the piece. The second half takes cellular matter from the first and zooms in, revealing a gentler play of interlocking canons.

Once I’d drafted the piano parts, their constant ascent-descent looked like waves in the score, which suggested the back-and-forth exchange of “wet” (reverberant) to “dry” (short) sounds in the percussion parts.

Recent Performances

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Works for Percussion by this Composer

Austerity Measures - Percussion Quartet
Listen to the Radio A Lot - Snare Drum, Electronics
Tides and Currents - 2 Pianos, Percussion Duo
You broke it, you bought it - Multiple Percussion, Electric Guitar