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Cyan tracks the force and fluidity of water.  Isolated instruments dissolve into eachother, forming fused sonic surfaces that ripple, accumulate energy, and crest.  Abrasive metal screeches break warmer chordal planes expressing wetness as an agent of rust and material warp. Steam appears at the collision of extremes.   Undertows pull and bend the form.  Sound events occur in different mediums, some muffled as though shouted underwater, others cut and punctuated as if articulated in plain air.

Water in Cyan does not act as metaphor; rain and foghorns are not instrumentally mimed.  Rather, the ensemble embodies dynamic forces that govern the action of great lakes – the gestural urge of tides, the crest and trough of waves, the change of state produced by juxtapositions of heat. 

Cyan was commissioned by the Marquette Symphony Orchestra with support from Phyllis Reynolds and the National Endowment for the Arts.  It was premiered in Marquette’s Kaufmann Auditorium on April 4th, 2009.