Blues Had, Blues Gone Away (2008)

String Quartet
7 min.

May 17, 2008, San Francisco Conservatory Salon

Daniel Jang, violin
Midori Nakayama, violin
Deanna Said, viola
Adaiha Macadam-Somer, cello

Notes

For years, my esteemed teacher David Garner had been trying to get me to write an "academic" piece. I decided that for my last SFCM project, I'd take him up on it—in my own oddball fashion—and set about writing a funk string quartet on an eleven-tone pitch set. The result was a sour harmonic mush that made both of us wrinkle our noses. Yet there was something genuinely funky inside, screaming to get out. "Forget the academic thing," David said. "Write your funk string quartet." But by then, I was tied in knots. So I sought refuge in this movement instead, finding a kind of catharsis through my more familiar and visceral method of guitar tinkering and singing. I'd hoped to make quick work of it and return to the first movement, but did you know that arranging even simple ideas for string quartet is really hard? Well, I got it done eventually, and that first movement is still awaiting its revival.