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Full Orchestra
String Orchestra
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Solo Instrumental
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It came to me one day in my first year at USC – what would it sound like to put ping-pong balls inside a piano? I tried it and I was more than pleased with the result. After developing a few techniques, I began writing this piece in late 2004, not finishing it until December 2006. I utilize a number of various techniques with the ping pong balls, from strumming the strings beneath them to a very controlled rolling on the strings.
Dark and Stormy Night was not meant to be programmatic, though it may seem that way. The music is based on a minor triad with a major third on top, an eerie-sounding chord. Later on, I state a twelve-tone row, the only use of serialism in any of my finished compositions. I develop it somewhat, but treat it only as another small building block on which the rest of the music evolves. After a slow and creepy beginning, the music breaks into a frantically fast panic. Repeated notes imitate the bouncing ping pong balls, and transition into a middle section that requires the page turner to play a repeated figure low on the piano while the soloist drops ping pong balls one at a time onto the higher strings in the piano, rolling them one way or another, sometimes dropping two or more at a time. The page turner is constantly at work adding and removing ping pong balls, and the panicked music returns, this time with an increasing number of balls inside the piano. Tone clusters seem to do the trick to activate stagnant ping pong balls. Towards the end of the piece, the notes keep on piling on while the page turner tosses handfuls of ping pong balls inside the piano, until finally...
Pictured to the right is pianist Alessio Bax performing this work in Lexington, KY in August 2010. Below is a video of the premiere of this work, featuring Grace Zhao at the University of Southern California. In both performances, I was the obligato page turner.
Duration: ca. 8'. View a sample of the score here.
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