Blue Glacier Decoy

From Wind Repertory Project
Jennifer Jolley (photo: Liz Glenn)

Jennifer Jolley


General Info

Year: 2018
Duration: c. 7:05
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Jennifer Jolley
Cost: Score and Parts - $40.00


Instrumentation

Full Score
Flute
B-flat Soprano Clarinet
E-flat Alto Saxophone
Piano
Percussion, including:

  • Vibraphone

Electronics with narration


Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

Last year’s obituary in The New York Times for the modern dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown only casually mentioned her debt to the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. It was an unusual characterization for an artist who once told her fellow Washingtonian, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, that “The rain forest was my first art class.”

Indeed the Pacific Northwest’s instruction is found in many of Brown’s work. Her 1970 piece Floor of the Forest employs a steel scaffolding to hold a cloth canopy of ropes threaded with colorful used clothing to create a synthetic forest where dancers writhe and wiggle.

Her 1979 piece Glacial Decoy is similarly derived from these experiences. In this work Brown and Robert Rauschenberg created fleeting images via gossamer-clad dancers and an ongoing found image slide projection. The mechanical and physical movements become an elegant analog to the glaciers. The images and dancers move and shift forward and back, side or other side, or anywhere in between, like a lateral melt. The fleeting projections become a visual metaphor melting and congealing anew.

I have never been to Olympic National Park, so I followed Brown’s example and combined my own experiences with what I learned from an artist who followed the Hoh River Trail, studied the Hoh Rainforest, and revered the Blue Glacier. We should follow her lead and do the same. We must “give [ourselves] a moment to feel this very mobile sense of how the balance is.”

- Program Note by composer


Media


State Ratings

None discovered thus far.


Performances

To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project

  • University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory Wind Ensemble and UMKC Conservatory Wind Symphony - 29 October 2023
  • Chamber Players of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Symphonic Wind Ensemble - 8 October 2023
  • Neoteric Chamber Winds - 3 October 2023
  • Neoteric Chamber Winds - 12 August 2023
  • Oklahoma City University Clarinet Studio Recital - 5 April 2023
  • MSN Camerata Nova - 3 November 2022
  • University of Portland (Ore.) Chamber Players (Patrick Murphy, conductor) - 24 April 2022
  • Georgia State University (Atlanta) Wind Orchestra (Chester B. Phillips, conductor) - 28 April 2021
  • South Dakota State University (Brookings) Wind Symphony (Jacob Wallace, conductor) - 22 March 2021
  • University of Colorado Boulder Symphonic Band (Matthew Dockendorf, conductor) - 7 December 2020
  • Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge) Chamber Winds (Nick Doshier, conductor) - 14 October 2019
  • Grand Valley State University (Allendale, Mi.) New Music Ensemble (Bill Ryan, conductor) – 22 June 2018 *Premiere Performance*


Works for Winds by This Composer

Adaptable Music


All Wind Works


Resources

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