“Bridges (2024) is a set of two preludes for solo piano, each of which forms a “bridge” between two seemingly disparate works. “Rapture After Schoenberg and Kandinsky” is inspired by Vasily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28 (Second Version) (1912) and the final movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2, “Entrückung” (1908). Although Kandinsky and Schoenberg may have held similar philosophies about art, each piece provokes in me a unique response. However, despite their differences, both works evoke the Biblical end times: Schoenberg’s title refers to the Rapture and Kandinsky’s painting suggests the subsequent apocalypse. In “Rapture,” I forge additional common ground between the two pieces by interweaving materials from “Entrückung” and sonic imagery implied by Improvisation 28 (Second Version): Schoenberg’s opening gesture becomes distant thunder and the subsequent melodies in the viola and cello parts become horn calls and, later, the bells I imagine sounding from the church in the upper-right corner of Kandinsky’s painting.

In writing “Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko,” I took as my point of departure Darius Milhaud’s Tango des Fratellini and Alexander Archipenko’s Carrousel Pierrot (1913). Tango des Fratellini, an extract from Milhaud’s ballet Le Bœuf sur le toit (1919–20), is based on Tristeza de caboclo (1919) by Brazilian composer Marcelo Tupinambá. My piece weaves together fragments of both Milhaud’s and Tupinambá’s material into a frenetic and off-kilter dance that suggests Archipenko’s clown-turned-carousel spinning out of control.”