Program Note

Commissioned by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, duration 32’

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, 2022, with eyes the color of time is hailed as “a vibrant composition, inspired by works in The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism,” by the Pulitzer committee.

The titles of the movements in this piece refer to works of art that were featured in The Contemporary Museum (Spalding House) in Honolulu when it first opened: George Rickey’s kinetic sculpture Two Open Triangles Up, Gyratory III (1988), Deborah Butterfield’s Nahele (1986), James Seawright’s Mirror XV (1987), Toshiko Takaezu’s moons (a series of sculptures she often referred to by the Hawaiian word, mahina), and David Hockney’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges (originally conceived as a set for the opera by Maurice Ravel of the same name). The title of the entire work, with eyes the color of time, comes from a phrase in the Ravel opera. The main movements are framed by interludes referencing the bronze doors at the entrance of the museum which had silhouettes of women in them (by Robert Graham). The museum closed its doors permanently in December 2019 as I was finishing writing this work.