Upward Mobility A
Instrumentation: Solo Piano
Duration: 7:00

There is a school of musical thought sometimes called "New Complexity" that essentially asks the question: "what happens if we ask the performer to do the impossible?" The goal, presumably, is to provoke a strain that imparts some ineffable emotional quality in the music by making explicit the idea of sacrifices and concessions in the unattainable pursuit of perfection. I think that the aesthetics of New Complexity, an essentially European aesthetic, are interesting musically, but more interesting to me is how we approach the question of effort in our daily lives at this moment in America. What are we encouraged to do with our precious time, and with what level of dedication should we approach it? I personally find the idea of effort for effort's sake slightly obscene, and it is this obscenity that I want to capture in this piece, which attempts to strive endlessly toward a goal that may or may not be actually in reach. I am lucky to have Forrest as a performer for this piece, as his playing is an example in the first order of the best qualities of the human spirit to which, by composing this piece, I am guiltily playing the devil's advocate that American life suggests to me.