Duration: 8 minutes
In the moonlight, another world is illuminated, one that exists beside our own, enchanted by silvery tones and shadows. Delicately though, for this world can flicker out of existence on the whim of a passing cloud.
Moonlight is an attempt to transcribe my inner experience of genderqueer identity. Growing up without a sense of this possibility in my childhood and early adulthood, the elusive, liminal, yet beautiful possibility of another way of being seems to flicker in and out of my sense of reality. But it still remains to me a source of resistance and resilience, as if it were a forest within my innermost self to which I can return and be restored.
In this work, I use a system of generative intervals to create a coherent harmonic space that has elements of syntax without tonal centricity or traditional triadic harmony. The piano part consists of iterations of alternating steps and leaps while the freely-composed clarinet line weaves melodic lines above with subtle counterpoint. Ultimately the work breaks out of this system at the climax before returning to a newly tender expression of the opening section.
Audio
Recorded by Anthony Aguayo on clarinet and Ednaldo Borba on piano.