The Squirrel and the Crow

Listen to the work here!
 
The Squirrel and the Crow is a duet for two instrumentalists of varying timbre, who act out a series of scenes about a squirrel and a crow who meet and become friends. This work was inspired by two elements of my life during the spring of 2021. The first is my enrollment in an elective composition course as a part of my studies at the University of North Texas, and the second is a massive snowstorm which caused a statewide power outage during the winter season. When the storm had receded, the power was back on, and Texas was back to a livable temperature range, our composition course had arrived at an exploration of text based scores, and this was a topic which really fascinated and resonated with me.
 
While listening to a recording of a Pauline Oliveros work to prepare for our lecture, I was sitting outside enjoying the return of the sunlight, when in my musical meditation I had the pleasure of observing a squirrel and a crow hopping around a park bench together, and sitting there watching these two animals become unlikely friends inspired the creation of this work. Throughout the course of the piece, each of the two musicians takes on the role of one of these animals, loosely acting out the imagined story of their interaction at that park bench through improvisation on their instruments. A narrator can read the lines of text in the score to help convey this musical acting to an audience. Notably, the story of the squirrel and the crow is conveyed entirely via musical improvisation, and not staged acting (beyond the natural theatricality of expressive performance), allowing the music to shine through as a vehicle for story telling. The requirement that the two instrumentalists be of differing timbres (i. e. woodwind, brass, percussion, string, keyboard) helps to characterize this story within the trope of “unlikely” animal friends.