Time Clips, Primitive
was written in 1993 at the request of internationally renowned pianist Jane Coop. It is a difficult piece that presents the performer and the listener with the idea of time not flowing continuously, but continually, with stops and starts and irregular patterns flowing along the surface of the music. Buried in this surface activity are "micro-melodies", short gestures that appear briefly and then subside. At important points in the piece we hear bell-like tones from the piano, vertical sonorities that freeze time and contrast with the continual surface of the music.
In 2014 Jane suggested that I add a realtime video component to the work, to be premiered at her Ironworks Sessions concert series in 2015. I quickly agreed. I was attracted to the photographs taken by Edweard Muybridge, since in those images he is freezing time, reducing movement to its basics, and in a sense creating motion primitives. In my use of the images we explore the continuity, fragmentation, and blurring of the human form in motion, eventually refreezing that motion before it too is fragmented and dispersed by the pianist.
