1992 Night Passage
Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant
1991 Lipstick (ballet)
1990 Hammer Music
1989 Fantasie of a Sudden Turtle
Symphony No.1 Castles in the Air
1988 An Unavoidable Obsession
Waves of Talya
1987 My Friend Mozart
Ebullient Shadows
Deep Flight
1986 Cross Scintillations
Before Infrared
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Strange Stone (2004)
First Performance

February 2004 Relache 
Philadelphia, PA

Instrumentation

fl., ob., alt. sax., bssn., perc., pi., vla., dbass

Duration

13'

Listen

Strange Stone



Program Notes

Strange Stone is commissioned by Relache as part of the national series of works from Meet The Composer Commissionning Music/USA. In Stange Stone, I set out to create a sound pallet that I have been envisioning for a while—a piece that in its own way, and in a more varied force level, represents the new music ensemble equivalent of the sound of the traditional Turkish instrument zurna. The zurna can be described as the grandfather of oboe, with a very nasal, complex and extremely loud sound (one can hardly hear the bass drum when they are played together). Through the instrumentation selected I wanted to create a super polyphonic zurna, with a huge range and added expressional variance. The timbral qualities of zurna have been imprinted on the work’s aggressive sections. I have synthesized the raw qualities (rhythm and pitch) of the Balkan and Turkish folk music that use this instrument in a no-holds-barred fashion that will jolt, slap and hopefully shock. In the contrasting soft section(s) I have created a warped version of Ottoman classical court music, which is very much like slow sufi or dervish music.