for B-flat clarinet (doubling E-flat clarinet) and piano
Shadow Traffic was written in the spring of 1994 for Lisa Johnson and Christopher Oldfather to play on a concert of Friends & Enemies of New Music. I planned it to be four sections, corresponding roughly to the four movements of a classical sonata, but I was only able to finish three in time for the premiere, which took place on June 9th at Merkin Hall in New York. I had every intention of returning to the piece afterwards, but that never happened.
Then, in the spring of 2024, Marianne Gythfeldt and Augustus Arnone asked me whether I would like to write something for the Collide-O-Scope concert series and I began to think again about Shadow Traffic and whether it might be feasible to add the missing section. Doing so required considerable forensic study of my thirty-year-old sketches and notes, and a kind of interrogation of my younger self, who sometimes seemed to be a willing partner and sometimes left me perplexed. But as I got reacquainted with the materials and methods at work in the piece I began to feel more comfortable inhabiting its partly forgotten, yet familiar world. The result is an unusual hybrid that reaches across a span of three decades, unfolding in a curiously seamless way.
The four sections of Shadow Traffic are played continuously. In the opening Allegro vivace the clarinet first plays an expressive melody then joins the piano’s quick toccata. In the Scherzando melodic fragments ticking along at different speeds are passed back and forth among the instruments. Near the middle of this section there is a very slow, sustained melody in the piano’s lowest register. Fluid, arching figures introduce the Allegro onirico then give way to the Lento, in which the low piano melody is taken up by the E-flat clarinet in its highest register. When the Allegro onirico returns, it recalls fragments of earlier music as it builds to a dramatic climax. Throughout the piece occasional moments of seriousness give way to music of a more playful character. Shadow Traffic is dedicated to the four musicians whose performances inspired it: Lisa Johnson & Christopher Oldfather, and Marianne Gythfeldt & Augustus Arnone.
date: 1994/2024
duration: 11:00
premiere: June 9, 1994, Merkin Hall, New York, NY; Friends & Enemies of New Music; Lisa Johnson - clarinet, Christopher Oldfather - piano.
premiere of the revised version: April 7, 2025, New Music Series, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ; Marianne Gythfeldt - clarinet, Augustus Arnone, piano.