Meander, Spiral, Explode by Christopher Cerrone for percussion quartet and orchestra was commissioned for Third Coast Percussion by the Britt Music & Arts Festival, Teddy Abrams, conductor and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, in celebration of its 100th season.Ĭontact Reba Cafarelli, TCP Managing Director, for more information. The simple shape of the opening turns out to have contained the entire form of the work to come.” It was WG Sebald’s The Emigrants, Alison writes, that first made her realise the power and appropriateness of an unconventional form. The first section features what Alison calls primary elements, including chapters on: 1) point, line, texture, 2), movement and flow, and 3) color. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Let s leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. Meander, Spiral, Explode consists of two primary sections.
Arcs or waves, meanders, spirals, radials or explosions, cells and networks, and fractals. Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. The end of the work brings us back to the first three notes of the piece, suggesting one more shape that Jane Alison discusses in her book: a fractal. In her recent book, Meander, Spiral, Explode, she focuses our attention instead on six distinctive structures. The propulsive patterns in this movement constantly shift emphasis but always maintain energy. A single exclamation point ejects lines of 16th-notes into the ether which return, again and again, to a white-hot core. As for the last movement (again played without pause): the explosion seems fairly self-evident. A rising scale on two vibraphones slowly expands, speeds up, and finally blossoms into a sea of polyrhythms. The second movement (played without pause after the first) is structured like a double helix. The first movement-while dramatic and intense-seems to meander through different landscapes, where the gunshot-like sound of four wooden slats morphs into marimbas and bowed vibraphones while changing volume, key, and context.
The three words of the title seemed to pertain specifically to each movement of my concerto. I experienced what Melville called “the shock of recognition”-seeing someone describe your own efforts (in this case, an in-progress percussion concerto) without ever having seen a note of it. “In April 2019, my friend Tim Horvath, a novelist, texted me, “Do you know Jane Alison’s ‘Meander, Spiral, Explode’? It’s a book that focuses on unusual structural elements in novels.” I always trust Tim’s suggestions, and I tore through the book over the next few days, finding it unique and deeply insightful.
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