Crystallize

This work explores the idea of a percussion quartet as a genuine chamber dialogue between four distinct voices. Each of the players has a large and varied set-up which is nonetheless treated in large measure as a single “instrument”.
The sound-sources are classified into six families: drums, keyboard wood, untuned wood, keyboard metal, dry metal and resonant metal. Each of these families is distributed between a different pair of players – so for example player 1 plays glockenspiel and crotales (keyboard metal, shared with player 2), xylophone (keyboard wood, shared with player 3) and drums (shared with player 4).
The music is in one continuous 20-minute span, and works its way systematically through all the possible solos, duos and trios, individually and in combination, the whole ensemble only plays as a unified quartet for one passage towards the end. The solo passages are cadenza-like and ametrical, while the duos, trios and quartet are rhythmically aligned, many passages deal with superimpositions of different speeds, or of pulsed and non-pulsed material. The title refers to the way that the various subsets of the ensemble “crystallize” out of the texture, often dissolving again a short time later, as well as to the sparkling complexity of the sonic surface.