Dangerously Slick: Fanfare for Orchestra (2016).

One miserable February day a few years ago, I was absent-mindedly watching the local news. Because it was icy outside, I thought back to a warm, beautiful February morning in my student days in Southern California. On that particular day, I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep, so I did what I often did on weekends—I got in the car and took off to explore Los Angeles. I decided to drive the length of Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood to the sea. The street was mostly deserted. I noticed a single car in my rear-view mirror. It pulled up beside me at a stoplight. It was a long, low, late-sixties muscle car with its convertible-top down. This car was being driven by a typical Hollywood tough guy in a tee shirt and leather jacket. He wore aviator sun glasses and wore his dark hair greased back. He slowly turned his head to look over at me, expressionless. At that moment I was startled from my day dream by the local weatherman speaking the words: "dangerously slick". At that moment, the words applied not to the awful weather outside but rather to the man in the car on that long ago day. The words "dangerously slick" suggested to me a musical piece. A piece that would be, like the man in the car, cool and slightly menacing, yet somehow comical. He was a Hollywood cliché, like something out of an old movie, a bit of local color meant to spice up a perfect Los Angeles morning. I envisioned an extended fanfare with brass instruments cascading over one another. I imagined a fugue in the middle of the piece where the fugal melody would be played in fits and starts, like a car sputtering to pull away from a traffic light. When Dr. Edgerton approached me about a year ago to write a concert opener, I told her that I already had something mind—it would be called Dangerously Slick.

Dangersouly Slick, Southeast Missouri Symphony, Sara Edgerton, conducting (excerpt).