Fling

fling was written in 2004 for a 13 piece ensemble who turned it down because they deemed it too difficult. However, conductor George Stelluto really liked the piece and performed it in this transcription with his student orchestra at the 2006 Las Vegas Music Festival. The original instrumentation included two saxes, drumset and bass which, to my limited imagination, implied jazz. The orchestra version lost the two saxes but kept the jazz. Formally, the piece combines elements of rondo, variations, and arch form. I started the piece with a device I had previously used: a canon by inversion (this time with four voices) which is the ritornello of the piece. The initial cell of two short repeated notes followed by a longer one becomes the subject of the main theme, which immediately gets worked through a multitude of canons. Near the end, I added more nerdy fun by stating the ritornello’s melody above the return of the first episode which leads to the last statement of the main theme. The windows of the second floor studio where I lived and composed fling gave right onto 7th Avenue South. No wonder fling turned out to be such a high-octane urban piece, with the constant roar of traffic and general mayhem emanating from the street below. fling: verb 1- to throw or hurl forcefully 2- - a. rush headlong b. embark wholeheartedly noun 1- a throw, a plunge 2- a spell of indulgence or wild behavior 3- an impetuous whirling Scottish dance