2. Sonata

TITLE: 2 Sonata
CAT# (YEAR COMPOSED): 86 (2011-12)
INSTRUMENTATION: alto flute
PAGES: 24
DURATION (APPROX): 17’
PREMIERE BY: partial premiere by Mats Möller at the University of Malaya, Dec 3, 2013

This piece uses many contemporary performance techniques that are based on research into flute acoustics and performance practice.The notation often uses scalable notational features that apply to methods of sound production. Many of the resultant sounds are non-normal and conventionally "non-musical". Specifically the 2. sonata has to do with (1) transitions near a critical point in fluid flow where a disturbance triggers a regime of irregular and disordered behavior and how patches of turbulence are embedded within a surrounding laminar flow; & (2) my continuing interest in desynchronized and multidimensional sound production; & (3) how in 1961 senior Kennedy officials publicly condemned the harsh controls at the East-West borders in Berlin designed to stop the flow of thousands of refugees, but who privately had prior warning but said nothing as they secretly worried that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and East German President Walter Ulbricht might sign a peace treaty that could threaten Allied and West German access to West Berlin...