Photo | Pier | Moonlight

The musical ideas and form of Photo | Pier | Moonlight, for violin duo (2015; rev. 2016), were suggested by a series of photographs entitled Pier 18 – Rows of Prints (1971) by Jan Dibbets. There are two stacked rows of prints. The top series reflects variations in the settings of the actual camera apparatus, progressing from very light to almost black depending on the prescribed f-stop. The images in the bottom series were taken with only one camera setting, but the pictured environment itself—beginning with the pier in daylight—was transforming: as the sun set below the horizon, the changing light produced a similar gradation from very light to almost black, an evolution from an opaque, almost washed-out image in daylight to one so dark and focused that it disappears in the moonlight, itself cloud-crossed. The spare instrumentation captures the impression of Dibbets’ haunting image.

The work was written for the 2015 Five College New Music Festival at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Music & Dance and the Music Departments of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges (Fives Colleges, Inc.).