pull

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PULL (1995) Purchase Online

Premiere: March 29, 1995
Duration: 6’

Instrumentation: Alto saxophone, piano

Program Note:
Pull – light, hot and virtuosic – is a brief but intense struggle between two groups of musical material. Pungent, pounding chords open the work, followed by fleet, cascading arpeggiated figures which enter about a minute later. These blocks, and a few structurally related offspring, are repeated and varied, but retain their essential characteristics throughout the work. They tug at each other, try to influence each other, vie for preeminence. But in the end neither dominates and there is no resolution of the internal conflict. There is only the push and pull of contrary, though complimentary, forces.

– James Matheson