For Robert Erickson
premiere: Steven Schick, Conrad Prebys Music Center, La Jolla, 4/23/25
length: 16 minutes
date: 2024
instrumentation: solo percussion (vibraphone, just tuned vibraphone, and cymbals) and electronics
video (soon)
audio (soon)
program note:
For Robert Erickson is an homage to the composer and professor Robert Erickson (1917-1997) who was the founder of the UC San Diego Department of Music, and an extraordinary, adventurous, and inventive musician and thinker. Erickson fostered an environment that valued creativity, collaboration, and experimentation above all else, and would be especially welcoming to composers and performers (as opposed to music scholars who dominated most university music departments at the time.) Steven Schick (for whom I composed this piece) and I have both benefited from being able to work and collaborate in this Department for many years, and we dedicate this piece to his memory with admiration and gratitude.