Notes for: July 15, 2025
Sound Bites began as a commission from the Aolis Collective, a group of Dutch double reed wind players. It was completed in 2001 and was premiered by that group at the International Double Reed Society Conference at the University of West Virginia in August of that year.
The piece languished in a desk drawer for several years, and the fact that it was scored for 2 Oboes, 2 Oboes d’Amore, 2 English horns, 2 Bassoons and a Contrabassoon, an unusual and cumbersome ensemble at best, made the chance for future performances unlikely to say the least.
In 2023 I took the piece out again and discovered more possibilities than I had originally exploited in the score. Moreover, it provided an opportunity to recast the work for forces that might be more readily available, and also to tighten the writing, rebalance sonorities, and pare things down to a more economical scale. Keeping the “bones” of the piece, I rewrote it for the standard woodwind quintet, and that is the version you will hear today.