COMPOSER SPOTLIGHT: DUNCAN PETERSEN-JONES, "BAC'D"
Our final Composer Spotlight features MCI composer Duncan Petersen-Jones's Bac'd, a new work for saxophone quartet exploring the intricacies of an inherently musical idea. The composer writes:
"Bac'd started off as an experiment, to see what I could do with only 4 notes. After starting with this, I continued to write it out until I felt the piece was fully written. With having only a limited number of pitches, I had to rely on rhythm, motives, and the interactions between the pitches to add variety. It was definitely a challenge to keep the piece interesting with these limitations, but I felt that I overcame this through having different implied pitch centers and through the interactions between the quartet. Throughout composing this piece, I was very tempted to include additional pitches, but ultimately forced myself to only use these four, which is something that I'm glad I did in the end."
Bac'd received its world premiere this year at the University of Michigan. It will be performed at our collaborative concert with the Zenith Saxophone Quartet this Sunday, October 14th at Central Michigan University, which will also include several world premieres composed by MCI members.
