Sebastian Currier

Glow

Composer's note:When pianist Inon Barnatan asked me to write him a new work, he had a particular stipulation: that I somehow connect my piece with Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, which he would program alongside my new work. This seemed an intriguing proposition. I decided not to refer to any musical material in Gaspard, but took my cue from the textual elements that accompany the score. The title of the work comes from a collection of poems by Aloysius Bertrand. It is generally translated as 'The Treasurer (or Jewel Keeper) of the Night.I imagined jewels gleaming from some narrow light source in the otherwise enshrouding darkness. This was my staring point: light at night. Indeed the poems that Ravel selects from Bertrand's collection refer to light with the general context of darkness. In creating my piece, Glow, I imagined all the myriad ways objects are lit at night and settled on seven: moonlight (a not to Ravel), a simple spark momentarily illuminating darkness, a lighthouse in the distance, the metric flashing of a strobe light in a nightclub, the colourful exuberance of fireworks exploding above, a spiral galaxy slowly rotating in distant space, and the embers of a fire as it fades.Â'- Sebastian Currier -