Cascade, for Symphony Orchestra, 2018
Cascade is an orchestral work dedicated to the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. Despite its relative brevity, the piece is symphonic in its emotional scale, seeking to explore the outermost limits of diatonicism over the course of its 10 minutes. It is a work of vast contrast, veering between arrhythmic masses of drifting pantonal clusters and firmly beat, atonal polyphony.
The piece begins with a lone flute flickering to life, introducing a prominent, recurring melodic motif. The brief spark of energy rouses the orchestra’s highest regions over a distant timpani; life slowly seeps into the bass regions via the C major scale, building in urgency and ferocity to a climax of orgiastic fury. Rhythmic stability settles in before a flurry of brass brings the music to a realm of pulsating, Adams-esque triadic textures. Notes outside C major creep in, and as the woodwinds wrench free of their repetitious patterns, the full chromatic gently asserts itself. The strings retune; dissonant, competing lines interact contrapuntally, working up to a frenzy of madcap orchestral virtuosity. A towering brass dissonance resolves itself into an explosion of C major, and the piece ends with a lone trumpet philosophizing over glittering scales and spacious harmonies.