Iridian Maelstrom

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Iridian Maelstrom is a work for six percussionists utilizing their choice of keyboard percussion instruments, such as the marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, or similar instruments, accompanied by a seventh performer whose role in the piece is to solve a puzzle cube, such as that designed and manufactured by the Rubik’s company, with dimensions 5x5x5. The cube is initially scrambled, and is solved throughout the performance. Each of the six players is assigned a color of the cube, and reads off of one of the cube’s six faces, referred to by the color of its center square (which will be unchanging for an odd dimension cube) as a graphic score. The players perform pulsing gestures throughout the piece, by reading across one row of their face, and using the five colors they see to determine the pitches, dynamic, register, and pulse speed of that gesture, according to the grid in the score whose header matches their color. After the piece begins, and each player creates an initial gesture based on the top row of their face of the scrambled cube, players change gesture one at a time, in a predetermined cyclic order, by going to the next face, and reading whatever sequence of colors is present in the next row as they look up from their instrument. Thus, the puzzle cube becomes six graphic scores that change while the performance is in progress, until the piece ends with the cube solved. At this point, performers will notice that their gestures become identical. As such, the piece is a rainbow colored storm of sound that proceeds to a soft relaxed unison as the cube moves to being solved.