The material that comprises this Landscape of Retrieval can be said to haunt me. I return to it again and again, and have made many different constructions using this compositional matter. Most of these studies I consider private pieces, unsuitable for a public life. Two disparate and seemingly incompatible strands of musical thought are here conjoined: an inexplicable interest in drones comprised of sine waves in pure tunings, and the sonic detritus processed from bygone sessions of free improvisation that I once engaged in with my friend, the multi-intrumentalist Todd Whitman. All of the source material from those exuberant woodwind forays was originally recorded between 1988 and 1991. Most of the non-sine sounds in Landscape of Retrieval originate from saxophones and clarinets. A few gasps for air from the performers can also be heard. The piece explores the tension between the manipulation and deployment of these sounds in an abstracted and transformed manner versus their inherently referential qualities; an abstract and a documentary vie for pride of place within the same composition. How the matter of “retrieval” is encoded in the work is left to the listener to determine.

Landscape of Retrieval was realized at the composer’s home in Kansas City in the fall of 2004. An earlier version of this piece was presented on a UMKC Composer’s Guild concert in October of 2004; substantial revision and reworking of material followed that event.