Ryan Chase

In sketching Stargazer, I was still working out how to orchestrate.  I wrote at the keyboard (I still do) and was noticing my pianistic gestures were often incongruous with how other instruments worked.  When I heard the learned composers who comprised Aaron Travers’s course repertoire, I found suggestions and workarounds in scores by Dutilleux, Grisey, Knussen, and Saariaho.  At the same time, Claude Baker, Don Freund, and Alicyn Warren were encouraging me to explore the relationships between the music I was being taught and the music I was playing.  So, I returned to some of my abandoned material from the past and clothed it in some newer textiles.  Eric Bowling showed me how the flute worked and Andrea Scheibel was very patient in helping me adjust the percussion choreography.

Composed in 2012 for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Stargazer is a short, impressionistic suite about the night sky. The musical mimesis of astral events and objects is explored through spectral-adjacent chord voicings, jazz licks, “indie rock” grooves, and extended techniques.