Everything In Its Place
ensemble 2.2.2.2, 4.2.3.1, timp+3, harp, piano, strings
written fall 2018
duration 14 minutes
read Feb. 4 2018, Miriam Friedberg Hall, Peabody Conservatory by Joseph Young and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra
Honorable Mention in the 2019 New York Youth Symphony First Music Commission
Everything In Its Place grew naturally out of a conversation about, of all things, ‘tiny homes.’ Bastions of sturdy compactness, this new trend in home design epitomizes economy of means. Shelves pull outward to transform into new storage spaces; cupboards slide open to reveal chairs and desks; walls themselves extend into collapsible stairs to enable access to higher levels.
This kind of colorful and sometimes spectacular compartmentalization attempts, paradoxically, to bring together the best of two worlds: all the relaxed elegance of minimalism and all the grandeur and fullness of excess. Everything you could ever want has a place in this philosophy; a place to sleep, hidden in the wall. A place to eat, tucked away in the pantry. A place to work, doubling as a flight of stairs. Your tea collection, kept in a small wooden box that folds out of an attachment to the cupboard in the bookcase-refrigerator that converts into a dishwasher with the right combination of pushes and pulls. It’s an aesthetic that could only have emerged in the bizarre present, a time of so many invasively peddled ideas and products that one longs to get away from them while also having all of them. This work is a response to the quirky beauty of this philosophy of compartmentalization.