Evasive Maneuvers (2021)

Written for Silviu Ciulei and Jeffrey Brooks, Evasive Maneuvers features slinking clarinet tunes and syncopated guitar grooves that weave around each other in different streams of rhythmic activity, sometimes seemingly at odds, and sometimes coming together. Knowing Silviu’s extensive background in flamenco, I incorporated a number of noisy and virtuosic flamenco guitar techniques into the piece, such as the rasgueado, which involves the rapid strumming of a note or chord with each finger in quick succession. The clarinet complements the guitar with trilling and rapid flourishes, also serving to introduce much of the melodic material throughout the piece.