Abstract
Pianist Julia Den Boer presents The Underfolding—a solo keyboard program of recent compositions by Eric Wubbels, Erin Gee, Giulia Lorusso, Linda Catlin Smith, and Samuel Yulsman exploring the meditative quality of change through repetition.
Giulia Lorusso’s five miniatures are named from different deserts and serve as a metaphor for the fertile emptiness that can be found in silence and resonance as a form of meditation. Composer/improviser/pianist Sam Yulsman crafted a specific graphic notation for Between Partial Crossings based on the physicality of keyboard playing; the piece tests the limits of one’s perception of repetition. Linda Catlin Smith allows the listener to immerse herself in stillness and creates an almost tactile experience of sound in The Underfolding. A composer known for his unique sonic explorations, Eric Wubbels turns his probing ear toward his native instrument in his recent work Helix, exploring the threshold between improvisation and determinacy through the use of two independent, superimposed motivic cycles. Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XIV expands the articulatory possibilities of the instrument through the use of vocal sounds, her series of Mouthpieces presupposes a state of listening: they engage physiology rather than psychology.