Tzirk
for flute, clarinet, violin, and violoncello (2018) | Recording: Musicians of the USC Thornton School of Music
Tzirk was written in the summer of 2018 in Los Angeles, for musicians of the USC Thornton School of Music.
Tzirk (“circus”) is a series of three perversions. The first movement evokes a ticking clock, in a dry texture with increasingly spastic and motoric interruptions. The second movement disconnects from rhythmic stability to highlight the dramatic scope of the ensemble. The third and final movement presents consummate rhythmic and material rigidity, while perverting the perverseness of the previous two movements by contrasting them with a consonant harmonic scheme. The piece thus pushes the ensemble to its technical and musical limitations in order to explore a world on the fringe of realistic possibility, in the realm of the absurd.