Piano Trio No. 2: "We were lost, but there was laughter there" (2007)
Written for Heidi Wait & David Roberts
Premiere: May 2007, Eugene OR
Featured at: Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena Italy, August 2007
Broadcast on: Radio Classica: Rome, Milan

I. Impassioned and intense, yet flexible


II. With unexpected simplicity


III. Bitter, ironic, and not quite out of control

Live recording, October 2006
Heidi Wait, flute
David Roberts, cello
Scott J. Ordway, piano

Note

The Second Piano Trio was written for Heidi Wait (flute) and David Roberts (cello) in the winter of 2007 and was premiered in May of the same year in Eugene, Oregon. A second version was prepared for performance at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy during the summer of the same year. It was performed there by Duccio Ceccanti, Vittorio Ceccanti, and Sergio De Simone, new music specialists whose credits include premieres of works by Berio and Peter Maxwell Davies and recordings of works by Boulez, Berio, Reich, and Schoenberg. It has since received radio play in both Rome and Milan.

The musical language is direct, forceful, and always as simple as possible. Half-shadows and fragmented gestures are abandoned in favor of earnest, emotive, and unrestrained expression. Rhythmic clarity, simplicity, and drive are integral to the aesthetic of the work, while modal gestures and fragments of American popular song interact with neo-classical forms to define the melodic and harmonic structure of the music.

This movement, the finale, is a scherzo marked "Bitter, ironic, and not quite out of control." The frenzied, insincere, and off-color dance is juxtaposed with a solemn secondary idea—a hint of restrained honesty against the irreverent grain.