Graze at, pause at, then fired (i put him all into my arms) - Full Score and Parts (PDF Edition)

Program Note:

"Graze at, pause, then fired" began as a 2017 commission proposal for a festival that was eventually cancelled. I felt deeply inspired to write the piece, based on the story of The Good Samaritan. e.e. cummings also recontextualizes this story in his poem "a man who had fallen among thieves…," putting it into a contemporary and poignant light. His raw descriptions of helplessness and solitude stayed with me after the first reading, along with his compelling placement of the reader in both miniscule and galactic perspectives throughout the work. Presented in nine attacca movements, "Graze at" presents the clarinet as the fallen man, around which the other three instruments assume the roles of thieves, onlookers, bustling crowds, and eventually The Good Samaritan who should instill in us the urgency of such acts of radical kindness, not unfamiliar from the work of today's thriving networks of mutual aid, which contain some of the most powerful immediate actions we can take within our scope of personal and communal agency to change the world around us.