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 < later   > earlier Gates (2002) First Performance April 2003 Ruya Taner Purcell Hall London, UK Instrumentation piano Duration 12' Listen Gates Program Notes Gates is commissioned by Ruya Taner. Ruya’s Turkish-Cypriot background was the inspiring impetus for the creation of this work. I wanted to create a piece in which the traditional Turkish Instruments’ sounds like the saz’s, ney’s and the Turkish village drum’s may be synthesized and produced on the piano. Saz is a multi stringed strummed instrument that can create great perpetual rhythms. Ney is similar to a flute, with the sound being much more airy and spiritual. The Turkish village drum is the grandfather of the bass drum. It is loud with a reverberant, percussive sound that can be deep, festive and bombastic. To achieve these various colors, in addition to playing normally, the pianist dampens and plucks the strings inside, and even sings (without words). The fact that Greeks share the island of Cyprus with the Turks, and also because of my perpetual love for contrasts, I created distant choral-like sections and even repeated sounds of distant bells. The work is a voyage of the folk-like and the culturally inspired sounds melted in with the sound of the modern piano.