Postcard

Postcard was commissioned by the New York Miniaturist Ensemble with the condition that it had to be comprised of 100 notes or less. The urge to cheat was such that I immediately started to question, "what is a note?" A note is a symbol on the score, not a sound after all. I then came up with several loops, repeats, and aleatoric boxes where the performers get to choose how long they stay in each section, thus allowing the chosen hundred notes to breathe and get more millage. The work can last anywhere between 3 and 7 minutes depending on how long the performers choose to stay inside these loops. The title refers to three aspects of the piece: the unpretentious dimensions and character of the work (not a novel, a postcard), instruments are to be separated on the stage or hall to portray a necessary distance between the sender and the receiver of the postcard, and the both image and a message of the postcard are musically represented.