Red Tree, Yellow Sky (2009)
two percussion (1-marimba, 2-glockenspiel/vibraphone)
Commissioned by Opus 21

Red Tree, Yellow Sky was commissioned by Opus 21 for the Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Times exhibition at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. It was composed in response to the 1952 O'Keeffe painting of the same name. Two things immediately drew me to this work--first, its brightness, which is made of various shades of only two colors. This aligned very closely to my own general approach to music composition, creating works based on a very limited amount of material. Secondly, while at first glance I saw an imposing piece of wood in the foreground, the longer I studied this painting the more I saw the wood as an odd being doing a strange kind of dance. What O'Keeffe painted was brilliant--to bring life and depth to what was probably a very stark and static landscape. In the music I tried to capture that--by creating a bright, shimmering setting in which this figure dances, and to give the impression that this odd dance continues, as the landscape does, even after the piece concludes.