Metastable State
ensemble 1.1.2(2=b. cl.).1, 1.1.1.0, 2 perc., pno., string quintet
written fall 2019
recorded summer-fall 2020 by Stephanie Ray, Lara Mitofsky Neuss, Sam York, Clifton Joey Guidry III, Alexander Oon, Jia-Yi Lee, Joey Becker, Colin Crandal,
Sejeong Pyo, Jonathan Shin, Claire Hebeisen, Audrey Maxner, Amy Tan, Irene Han, and Patrick Raynard
duration 7 minutes
Special Distinction in the 2022 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize
Metastable states, in physics, are only locally stable - that is to say that a slight disturbance to a metastable system would leave it largely unscathed, but that a sufficiently large disturbance would send the system hurtling toward its stablest state.
Consider a ball sitting in a ditch on a large hill. A soft kick might jostle the ball without dislodging it, but a hard enough kick would take it out of the ditch and all the way down the hill. Such a ball in a ditch, then, is in a metastable state.
These ideas of jostling, kicks, and ostensible stability dominate Metastable State. Driven by an unsure drum set freewheeling through double- and triple-time rhythms, the piece contains a number of small, cellular ideas - a three-note motif introduced by the trumpet, a running sixteenth-note ostinato in the strings, a Dorian-inflected chord progression (i-IV), a gliss-filled bass line searching for resolution. Marked by constant time signature changes and competing rhythmic figures, the piece searches constantly for metrical stability, occasionally landing in crevices of regularity, only to be kicked out again and again.
Metastable State was initially inspired by the astonishingly virtuosic and spunky sounds of Snarky Puppy and Hiromi, who both filled my listening playlists back in my physics lab days.