title: Microphages
instrumentation: piano
duration: 4 minutes
written in: 1999/2019
In 1999, CoMA and the now-disbanded Ensemble Décadanse put out a call for ten-second-long pieces, which would be performed the following year at a concert called “2000 Miniatures for the Year 2000.” I was fifteen years old, with far more energy and far fewer deadlines than I have now, so I quickly conjured up a set of tiny piano pieces, called it Microphages, and sent it on its way. And sure enough, on May 28, 2000, the collection was played at Parc Jean Hugo in Lunel, France, along with 88 other sets from fourteen different countries. I never heard a recording, but I performed the piece myself a few times over the next few years.
Returning to Microphages in 2019, I found a lot that I was still happy with, and a lot that could use improvement. And so I decided to update the collection, drawing on everything I’d learned in the intervening decades: fleshing out harmonies, clarifying notation, reducing the music’s dependence on chromatic clusters, scaling back my overzealous teenage metronome markings, changing the order of the pieces, giving them new titles, and even cutting one of them. The result still has the spirit of the piece that was performed in Lunel that day, but it’s become cleaner and more intentional.
Listen
1. Mirror
2. Knight
3. Steam
4. Coiled
5. Tantrum
6. Stomp
7. Madrigal
8. Twelve
9. Rasch
10. Monody
11. Iron
12. Slam
13. Eyeroll
14. White
Daniel Baer, piano
Live at Elastic Arts, 9.19.21
Watch
Mabel Kwan, piano
Live at the Walden School, 7.23.20