Two surround compositions: Crossing Boundaries and The Puzzle Revealed Free

Crossing Boundaries (composed in 2000), was commissioned by Bates College to celebrate the millennium. The text aphorisms and reminiscences make a counterpoint of different spaces and moments to give different senses of the passage of historical and musical time. Musically, the piece moves from one large moment to the next one, usually reinforcing the phrasing of the text. Throughout, there is a shifting perception of just how fast we are moving. Musical sources include a Hebrew chant (which maintains a ghostly presence throughout the piece), Beethoven’s piano music, improvised jazz, analog synthesized electronic music, and distorted electric guitar. The Puzzle Revealed (2006) is a maquette for an evening‐long intermedia work, The Puzzle Master, a retelling of the Icarus myth by poet F. D. Reeve. This piece was conceived to specifically exploit the BeoLab 5 loudspeakers in 5.1 configuration. Material in the piece derives from vocal sources and explores morphing techniques that may become prominent in the larger work. The envelopment provided by full‐range 5.1 playback is used to test ideas about the range of possibilities for spectral fusion or disintegration as a dynamic feature of different sound objects.