Mayday

for two pianos (2018)

The breathtaking beauty of the open sky as viewed from the ground.  The first slow revolutions of the propeller.  The engine picking up speed, finding its rhythm.  The ascent, the miracle of breaking free from the Earth's gravity.  Climbing, climbing, stabilizing, leveling off.  The weightlessness and slow-motion beauty of a cloudscape.  Now watching the propeller rotate so fast clockwise that the blur of motion appears to rotate the other way instead.  Then a jolt, the tiniest interruption in its spin, is followed by several more.  Something is wrong.  A light blinks.  A warning buzzer goes off.  A needle spins wildly.  The control is unresponsive.  The nose points earthward.  Mayday mayday mayday.  Do you copy.  Mayday mayday mayday.  Over.  Mayday mayday mayday…

Mayday is the universally-recognized call for help in emergency situations.  Derived from the French phrase “M’aidez!” (“Help me!”), the call was first used by aircraft pilots in the 1920s.  The music plays with the unique possibilities of two pianos - playing the same material in stereophonic transposition, fusing into one aggressive machine, dancing with closerange chords at a speed no single piano could manage, trading echoes back and forth, pulling our ears in several directions at once.  One can listen to the piece with or without the airplane scenario in mind, of course, but once the relentless C-sharps begin, it is clear that the dangerous descent is completely unstoppable.  We expect a crash, we know a crash is coming, we brace for impact.  But the music does not end with a crash.  Instead, we hear three separated reminiscences from earlier passages, an enigmatic ending open to many interpretations.

Complete Recording