PROGRAM NOTES:

From its opening, As Sparks Fly Upward, bursts into motion. “Take time by the forelock,” says Henry David Thoreau, whose admonition propels the piece. “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

As the piece progresses, two spheres emerge: the temporal sphere heard in jagged motives and syncopated rhythms, and the celestial sphere in the high instrumental ranges, long melodic lines and slow harmonic changes. The rhythmic punctuation of the piano, cello and snare gradually diminishes while  the violin and clarinet lines spiral upward, reaching that place Thoreau found “under our feet as well as over our heads.”