In both cases, there are substantial technical (and physical) challenges, as found within the genre tradition of etudes. But in my etudes, the 'study' implied in the title is also a philosophical consideration: the instability of the trill in notation, in performance, and in function; the porosity of works via technics such as harmony.  Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The is an analogous dual 'study' and 'consideration' of the physical dynamics of performance, and the role of the body musicking. AoaNLAt has a distinctly light ekphrasis, drawing its memorable title from a minor figure in one of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels; a ship's Mind serving as a committee member of the Interesting Times Gang, endeavoring to avoid a war and engaging with hidden tensions within the Culture. The adoption here of the title is detached from the narrative, but plays with the intricate question of desire, in the novel invoked in the (self-adopted) name of a spacecraft carrying millions of citizens. Whether amorous, erotic, or agopic, love is temporal, and the moments before connecting are the most memorable and the most frustrating. The music work is repetitive in a manner rare in my corpus, an uninterrupted, unstoppable rearticulation of four-note chords in eighth notes. These harmonies transform throughout the 10-minute piece, modulating, inverting, shifting registration, density, voicings, sometimes distant echoes, sometimes approaching artillery fire. The physical challenge to the player is endurance and precision, from the rapid texture changes to the almost painfully slow changes in pedal positions. For the audience, the composer hopes for an evocation of the wait in the mechanical world of something more connective, and the frustration of its absence, here infinitely delayed by the pervasive anomie of the Now.

The film was made in partnership with Krytian Thor, at Oktaven Audio in New York. The work is performed by Ning Yu, who premiered the work at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 2019.