Hommage to Vivaldi: Fast Ride in a Short Machine (2019, 2022).

Hommage to Vivaldi: Fast Ride in a Short Machine began its life scored for a quartet of recorders. It was premiered by the Block4 Quartet at the Society of Recorder Players national conference in Durham, UK in 2019. In spite of the fact that it won the society’s composition competition that year, it has not, to my knowledge, been played since. It is pretty hard for recorders—it’s got lots of really high stuff and really low stuff and really loud stuff.

Rather than abandoning the piece, I decided to rework it for saxophone quartet. The saxophone version was premiered by the Southeast Missouri Saxophone Quartet in 2022. Later that year, I asked Zach Stern, who lead the group, to make a studio recording. It’s that recording that is presented here.

The title of the work refers to the Vivaldi piccolo concerto in C major. I played a lot of piccolo in my youth and I love the instrument. I even performed the Vivaldi concerto with the band at Southeast Missouri State University when I first taught there. Most of the material from my piece is based on the opening motive of the Vivaldi.

The Fast Ride in a Short Machine part of the title refers to John Adams’ piece Short Ride in a Fast Machine. I admire Adams’ work but I find myself getting the words in his title in the wrong order. The last time I got Adams’ title wrong, I realized that the incorrect title actually described my piece—it is fast and it is based on music for the piccolo, a short machine.