Project Type: Large Ensemble

Simple Sabotage

Instrumentation:  Chamber Orchestra & Electronics – 1.1.1.1 – 1.1.1 – perc(2) – pno – strings

Duration:  ca. 6:00

Program Note:

In 2008, the CIA de-classified a 1944 document – the Simple Sabotage Field Manual – developed by the Office of Strategic Services. Put to use at the end of WWII and during the Cold War, this field guide was intended to empower every-day citizens in Nazi or totalitarian-controlled countries to quietly contribute to the sabotage of enemy efforts, steadily wearing down the gears of industry and bureaucracy from within these authoritarian states. The guide slyly catalogs countless techniques for disrupting machinery, wasting resources, generating organizational conflict, sowing confusion, and (when all else fails) causing a scene.

In the field manual however, we find the same sorts of techniques and strategies that were used by those in power to disrupt the Civil Rights movement and countless other attempts to organize for freedom and reform. Simple Sabotage is a document that reflects the paranoia of the Cold War, the fear of the Red & Lavender scares, and the anxieties of institutions & individuals perpetually suspicious of the Other. With alt-right and fascist groups continuing to agitate and obstruct in the United States and around the world, the field guide still feels like a document of our time.

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual only catalogues strategies and techniques. Crucially, it doesn’t provide a moral framework for its readers to determine if, when, or how to undertake non-compliance, civil disobedience, or sabotage. Ultimately, the manual relies upon the reader’s conscience to determine what is just.

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Everywhere That Music Is

Instrumentation:  Wind Ensemble – 2(II=picc).2.2.2 – 4.3.3.1 – timp.perc(3) – pno

Duration:  ca. 9:00

Program Note:

This work began as a reflection on the various places where we encounter music: out in the natural world, in the middle of a bustling city, in a sacred space or a concert hall, and in the quiet solitude of our own minds. Everywhere That Music Is explores each of these locations in turn, beginning with the most expansive and reaching the privacy of a sort of “internal music” by the midpoint of the piece. After exploring the complexities of this internal landscape, the work once again turns outward, integrating the various elements heard throughout the work before arriving at the conclusion.

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