PRISM Quartet previews "TITLE" (excerpt) by Adam Silverman
March 12, 2023
First Presbyterian Church of Ypsilanti
300 N. Washington St., Ypsilanti, MI
Professor of Music Theory and Composition at West Chester University Adam Silverman describes his new saxophone quartet: “Organized in six movements, the music of Title consistently draws upon the stamina of its performers in a variety of ways, ranging from the first movement’s continuous melodic thread (demanding circular breathing from each of the performers), jagged rhythms and harmonic shifts of the second and third movements, unpredictable pulsations of the fourth movement, the long-phrased melancholy of the fifth movement, and an extremely intricate instrumental interplay in the last. Overall, the music comes across as bold and rambling, meant to explore the most tender and most muscular aspects of the ensemble. Wholly without program, the composition was given as generic a title as possible while paying tribute to a puzzle craze popular during the music’s composition: Wordle. Nodding to that game, all of the movement titles were selected from existing puzzle answers, each chosen to most closely reflect the character of the music of that movement. The number following each word simply denotes which day of Wordle used that answer.”