The idea of kissing takes on very different connotations in different languages, and I wanted to find a connotation that was as universal as possible. Therefore, in Kiss Around the World I decided to focus on the idea of the nurturing kiss, the kiss a parent would give a child. This was the most universal use of kissing I came across. Romantic kissing, which is what I initially thought would make the best focus, is not universal. It did not exist in much of Asia before the arrival of the Europeans; Koreans and Japanese actually use a modified form of the English word for romantic kissing.

Musically, Kiss Around the World is made up of a series of short sound units, usually one per word, that are arranged and developed into a lyrical, flowing texture. Being a composer obsessed with fragmentation and contrast, this was a novel and stimulating challenge for me that grew out of the theme of the piece and the musical materials at hand. The result is a soothing, gentle piece that has certain aspects of a lullaby, all the while employing the collage/mosaic techniques that are the hallmarks of my style. There is even a little collage surprise at the end of the piece…

The middle sec­tion of the piece is inde­ter­mi­nate or open: the per­form­ers decide how the musi­cal mate­ri­als will be pre­sented. This is also some­thing that I take from the Cul­ture theme, because the mul­ti­plic­ity of pos­si­bil­i­ties, end­less var­ie­ga­tion, and the impos­si­bil­ity of find­ing “right” answers seem to me impor­tant cul­tural prob­lems today.

On top of that, the most useful (or best) pieces of music are generally those for which there is the most consensus on usage: Beethoven’s ninth symphony and Michale Jackson’s album, Thriller are both “good” because a lot of people agree that they are good; i.e., a lot of people have found those two pieces of music useful for certain social functions.

Anyway, these were some of the thoughts running through my head while writing this piece, and they influenced my choice and usage of musical materials.

Why mul­ti­ple ver­sions? Because music today is mul­ti­ple. Every­one is exposed to music from mul­ti­ple cul­tures all the time, from mul­ti­ple time peri­ods, and in mul­ti­ple ver­sions. DJs remix pop songs, which are avail­able in numer­ous ver­sions, and do mash-ups that inter­twine mul­ti­ple tracks in the space of a few sec­onds. I think this is a good way to deal with the fact that we are, for the first time in his­tory, drown­ing in more music than anyone knows what to do with. For this reason, cre­at­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions is an impor­tant project of mine.

Musi­cally, Jack­ham­mer Lul­laby presents a humor­ous musi­cal set­ting of trying to fall asleep with con­struc­tion going on out­side the window.

I have decided on this approach in order to dis­tance the text from any fixed nar­ra­tive. The music instead pro­vides a space for these lan­guage objects to be observed in, and in which the lis­tener can choose to create or not create his or her own nar­ra­tive. Pre­sented in this mono­lithic manner and detached from the con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of lan­guage prepo­si­tions, Five Reflec­tive Frag­ments sets up the oppor­tu­nity for a kind of mytho­log­i­cal reac­tion to develop around the pre­con­cep­tions of the lis­tener. The word-units com­bine with the music to create hints, but hope­fully hints that will take each lis­tener in a dif­fer­ent direction.