A Wine Dark Sea [string orch]

for string orchestra

2007 MATA Commission

10′

A Wine-Dark Sea was commissioned by the Music At The Anthology 2007 Festival and premiered by The Knights Chamber Orchestra in New York City. This work also received the support of the American Music Center through a Composers Assistance Grant. A Wine- Dark Sea refers both to Homer’s evocative epithet in the Odyssey and the modern Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia’s collection of spare, trenchant short stories. I composed this work after spending two weeks at Tanglewood, working with one Uzbeki and two Persian musicians who inspired the musical language, which often fits “between the cracks” of traditional Western scales.