{"product_id":"5-players-harp-and-string-quartet-shadowy-figures-copy","title":"6 players: mixed sextet - Family Machine","description":"\u003cp\u003eEnsemble: flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, viola, percussion, piano\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDuration: 5 minutes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCommissioned by: Emily Anderson for Eighth Blackbird at the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePremiered:\u003cstrong\u003e \u003c\/strong\u003eEighth Blackbird at the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNote:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThere are some themes that take up long-term residence in your work, popping out their heads Caddyshack-style when you think you’ve finished with them; preoccupations to be dealt with again and again. One obvious one, for me, is family: my music is full of prodigal daughters, restless sons, telepathic sisters and mercurial cousins, monolithic parents.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnother theme, more amorphous but constant, is an unshakeable anxious energy–a need to stay in motion, to fill the space, perhaps to distract myself (or others) from a more daunting reality just offstage.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSuspecting these themes might be related, I sent a note to my friend Emma Healey, a writer whose work shares similar fixations. I asked her for a bit of text linking the two ideas: a family in motion. Her reply:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eHow family draws itself through you: uncaring, expansive and tracked to its own time as tide. There were times when the three of us - my mother, grandmother, and me - would remember a story together, and all that it took was the telling to make us a single machine pulling time back and forth through each other. Forever? Free will? Incantation? It freaked me right out. There was something about it I loved, being more than myself, and then something I hated. That was part of it too: call, release and response and relapse, a repeating the pattern repeating. There are some types of music you learn and some kinds you receive and some times you’re a channel. You don’t get to choose. They are not what you are and they made you.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI loved the idea of family as a machine: a process in perpetual motion, barreling towards an unfixed destination, pulling in everchanging and sometimes contradictory directions.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eFamily Machine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is an attempt to translate this idea– and Emma’s text– into a new work for the excellent chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. Like many of my recent pieces, it is in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003emoto\u003c\/em\u003e perpetuo \u003cspan\u003efrom the first note to the final barline, although in this case I have made an explicit effort not to allow a single moment of rest: anytime a sense of balance is nearly achieved, the material gets drawn back through the “machine”. The piano functions as a peacekeeper, a voice of reason at a heated dinner table, introducing more relaxed rhythms in the face of a relentless blaze of sixteenth notes. As the argument burns itself out, a melody emerges, simple and direct, in ascending canon. Agitated elements of earlier music are reintroduced, but now they are woven into a shared fabric, providing support and counterpoint for this new, more integrated upward motion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI suspect this will not be the last time this restless family finds itself in my work. But as Emma says: there are some types of music you learn and some kinds you receive and some times you’re a channel. You don’t get to choose.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42613448474720,"sku":null,"price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0584\/1118\/8320\/files\/Screenshot2026-02-26at11.51.01AM.png?v=1772124689","url":"https:\/\/62cf2d-c2.myshopify.com\/products\/5-players-harp-and-string-quartet-shadowy-figures-copy","provider":"Ellis Ludwig-Leone Online Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}