[Both perusal score and recording are of the oboe version.]
Instrumentation
oboe [or soprano saxophone] and piano
Duration
6 minutes
Program Note
Having grown up in as car-centric a city as Detroit, I have always been struck by the stark kind of beauty in highway overpasses and interchanges—disparate roadways overlapping and intertwining before continuing on to their respective destinations. This piece attempts to capture something of what I find interesting in these structures—the oboe and piano overlap, play off of one other, and occasionally coalesce before splitting off again.
This piece is also simultaneously meant as an homage to the British composer Michael Nyman, whose music I heard often growing up and which has proved to be an indelible influence on my style. Overpasses was inspired particularly by repeated listenings to Nyman’s piece Shaping the Curve, for soprano saxophone and piano. The works share many similarities, but where Nyman bases his piece on one sequence of four chords, the material in Overpasses is instead spun out of three sources (one melody and two short chord progressions) that are each developed in turn, before something approaching Nyman’s four chords makes a glowing appearance in the coda.
Overpasses lasts between five and six minutes in performance.
Selected Performances
Grayson Eichmeier, oboe; Gabriel Stossel, piano
April 6, 2024 (World Premiere)
Cleveland Institute of Music (Cleveland, OH)
Tristan Wilson 