2025 . . . 17 winds / percussion . . . 12:30
In the midst of my recent Impressionistic “Sketches” series, the 2024 piece Folio was a throwback to the more abstract sound mass style of the 1960s and ’70s. Its percussive attacks and inert masses of sound were all synthesized, also throwbacks to my early days of electronic tape music. (One of the earliest electronic compositions, Stockhausen’s 1960 Nr. 12 Kontakte, was full of sounds like giant steel beams hitting a concrete floor!) The other retro feature of Folio is suggested in its title: homage to Earle Brown’s 1952 FOLIO, a collection of abstract art scores in stark, proportional graphic notation.
This wind and percussion transformation of Folio was challenging. But I thought about the chaotic boldness of rocks — my own collection of many found on beaches and hikes, but also splendid displays at three places: Dick’s Rock Shoppe in Estes Park, Colorado; Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Elmhurst (now in Oak Brook), Illinois; and a wonderful gallery of geodes at the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas. Geodes are Nature’s sculptures, inscrutable gray rocks that, when sawed open, reveal magical worlds of dazzling-colored crystal structure.
Thomas Clark - composer / digital artist 