music

PROGRAM NOTE
Like many composers I seem to have an obsessive streak. Controlling this can sometimes be challenging. Some years ago, after being a non-smoker for over 15 years I found myself once again trying to quit and I began to wonder about the nature of addiction; what it provides, what it covers for, etc. Shortly after stopping smoking for this second time I read How To Stop Time by Ann Marlowe which chronicles her experience as a heroin addict while holding down a demanding and responsible career. Marlowe writes “addiction begins in nostalgia . . . but continues as an expression of love for repetition itself.” This idea—that the desire to repeat an unrepeatable pleasurable experience and that the repeated disappointment of it falling short provokes an acceptance of repetition as an end in itself—was the motor for this work. 

The opening few pages, slithery drones interrupted by rising piano figures leading into a thick wedge of sound, return over and over but elongated, constricted, or interrupted. Throughout these variations an increasingly persistent little figure (Bb, Ab, Db) nags its way into the foreground until, during a section of free glissandi and pizzicato it becomes the center of gravity and pulls all this melting material together toward a hushed ending. My original plan was to explore repetition without becoming repetitious, to explore nagging without becoming annoying, and to explore being trapped without becoming stagnant. The piece has turned out to be more dynamic than the plan, I feel, but I hope this note gives a context for following the work’s direction. 

REVIEW
You could try to match what you were hearing to the composer's assertion that the thing was about addiction. You see, he'd been reading New York author Ann Marlowe's kicking-heroin-is-a-breeze recovery memoir, How to Stop Time. And this piece reminded him of what he went through trying to kick the cigarette habit after 25 years off the things and, and . . . Almighty codswallop! Don't anybody believe a word of it! What Vores has done here is to compose a very fine Piano Quartet—a vivid, imaginative, and exciting piece . . . tightly crafted.
Richard Buell • The Boston Globe