orchestra: 2222 – 4221 – timpani, 1 percussion – strings
Program Notes
The title for Stand In The Center And Extend Outward comes from a meditation exercise I do when I am trying to clear my mind. When I say that I perform meditation exercises, I don’t want to cultivate the impression that I am a good meditator – I am, in fact, a terrible one. I have near-constant anxiety, and my default experience of the world seems to be, “nervousness, with hints of impotent rage and overactive stress response.” Attaining a sense of clarity, for me, has always been an uphill battle, and doesn’t always work.
Stand In The Center And Extend Outward is a piece that portrays the way that ideas germinate, fail, and reform. The idea begins as a five-pitch chord, a ringing fanfare in the brass and tubular bells. It soon spreads to the woodwinds, who alternate punchy clusters with sweeping runs, building in intensity as the chord rotates and changes shape. The piece halts for just a second before it explodes, disintegrating into a fine mist.
Out of this mist, the idea attempts to rebuild itself, starting out amorphous and blurry, but gradually taking shape. The piece builds again, on course to explode once more and have to start over, but it takes a sudden turn. Rather than explode, it quiets down suddenly. It refocuses on the idea, examining it from a different perspective. The idea finds a new, organic direction and grows toward a joyous, ecstatic close.