I. Jest

for orchestra

Duration: 10 min.

Program Notes:

I. Jest started its life as an orchestration experiment. I was listening to a work that had one of those stacked chord build-ups, you know, when each instrument comes in on a different beat, sustaining his/her pitch and creating a big swell. Well, I was listening to a piece with a lot of those in it and I got the idea to try and do it in reverse, start with the big mass and then accent each note as it exits until only a single pitch remains.  Not only that, but I thought it might be fun to try and use some serialist procedures in the piece (it’s painful to admit, but we all sometimes have such urges)…

Well, that lasted all of five minutes or so before I abandoned any serialist methodology and took the opening gesture and ran with it. The programmatic elements were introduced when I restarted the piece in the fall of 2009 (I had written about twenty measures during the summer and then shelved it), and I use the book Infinite Jest as a sort of metaphorical model. I wanted this piece to have a few drastically different kinds of music (like the staticness of Marathe and Steeply talking on the mesa in New Mexico, or the frenetic energy of an ETA tennis match, or the anguish and inherent sadness of the Ennet House residents). I desired to write a piece that was able to jump quickly and unabashedly from a high-minded modernist approach to a groove and back, becoming entirely post-modern in the process. I also wanted to bring about the mental anguish of the sought-after “entertainment” with a raucous shout section, where the music doesn’t as much go in your ears as punch a hole through your skull and lounge about in your brain.  But I wanted to do all this under the auspices of believable music. That is, I didn’t want you to have to read the book to understand the music. It’s not that kind of programmatic crap.

No, my friends, this is just an orchestra piece that I had a lot of fun writing, and I hope you have a lot of fun experiencing.

Ryan Jesperson
transcribed via interlace viewer
Nov. 16th, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

 

I. Jest won the 2010 UMKC Orchestra Competition and will be premiered by Robert Olson and the UMKC Orchestra Feb. 25th, 2011.

Fall, 2012: Joseph Abad will premiere a new Saxophone Sonata.

Fall, 2012: Jordan Jacobson will perform fragments and memories in CT.

Spring-Summer, 2012: Jeux pour Jumeaux will be performed in San Francisco, CA.

Spring, 2012: Bobby Watson and the UMKC Big Band will premiere Rhapsody for Dean Moriarty in Kansas City, MO.

Spring, 2012: Ashly Evans will premiere Birdsongs in Houston, TX.

Spring, 2012: BA(da)SS will be performed by Ryan Ford in West Hartford, CT.

Spring, 2012: Jordan Jacobson will perform fragments and memories in CT.

Spring, 2012: Not Death, but Love will be premiered by Ineo Saxophone Quartet.

Spring, 2012: David Tayloe will perform A Page Out of Zen in CT.

May, 2012: The Invisible, Magic, Soccer Phone will be premiered in Middlefield, CT.

April, 2012: The UMKC Opera Dept. will perform portions of Songs from Behind the Curtain.

April, 2012: David Tayloe will premiere A Page Out of Zen in NY.

Feb. 17th, 2012: The 016 Ensemble will be perform Romanza for Alto Saxophone and Violin in Manchester, CT.

Dec. 3rd, 2011: Ryan defends his dessertation, Songs from Behind the Curtain at UMKC.

July 17th, 21st, 24th, 2011: Music Faculty from the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival will perform ...and those seven dwarfs in a series of concerts in Western Maine.

June 16th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, 2011:Orphée Redux will be performed by Rhymes With Opera on their East Coast Tour (NYC, Baltimore, Hartford, Boston).

June 12th, 2011:Selection from Songs from Behind the Curtain will be performed at the John Duffy Composers Institute in Norfolk, VA.

May 13th, 2011: The Ineo Quartet will perform the 1st movement of Not Death, but Love on their Fischoff Competition program in South Bend, Indiana.

March 19th, 2011: The Ineo Saxophone Quartet will perform ...and love is fire... from Not Death, but Love at the NASA conference in West Point, NY.

Feb. 25th, 2011: I. Jest will be premiered by Robert Olson and the UMKC Orchestra in Kansas City, MO.

Feb. 14th, 2011: Hebdomas Squatinae will be performed at the Nebraska at Kearney New Music Festival.

EVENT HISTORY