For score and parts, contact Jay directly

Flip a Coin (2020-2021)

For amplified chamber orchestra (fl, Bb cl, Bb tpt, tbn, tuba, dr set, harp, pno, str). 8 mintues 30 seconds.

Premiere performance by Cincinnati New Music

Flip a Coin does not have a narrative, but I’m told it’s evocative. I’d like to think it contains an unnamed drama. But in truth, it was just an experiment in playing with two styles. In a Classical sonata, the familiar and tired form of symphonic first movements, two themes are laid out one after the other, each in its own key. The basic struggle and drama (that an 18th-century audience presumably would have heard as such) is that the first theme eventually “wins” the second theme into its key by the end of the piece. There are lots of ways to get from point A to point B, but what I was focused on was updating the form: what if, instead of keys, we had styles? I often work polystylistically, so the idea stuck and percolated. The violent, aggressive first “theme” gives way to the inward and delicate second “theme,” before being written over by a third way: the heartfelt melodies of the second theme, but with the power of the first.