Duration 13-14 minutes Comissioned by Bang on a Can Premiered by Jeff Anderle, College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
Dolphy Triptych is a three-movement homage to the great multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, whose pioneering work expanded the expressive possibilities of the bass clarinet, establishing it as a legitimate jazz instrument. The first movement was commissioned byBang on a Can for bass clarinettist Jeff Anderle, who premiered the work during BOAC’s online Marathon Concert in April of 2021, and the two subsequent movements were added later.
The first movement, Song for Eric, uses Dolphy’s famous rendition of the Billy Holiday/Arthur Herzog standard God Bless the Child as a springboard, its lyrical simplicity derived loosely from the melodic contours of the original tune. The second movement Scherzoid acts as the previous movement’s polar opposite: fast, relentless, noisy, unruly, it is cast in a modified scherzo and trio form, with each section’s narrative being increasingly disrupted by music from previous sections. The third movement, Song for Eric (reprise), is a varied and rougher-edged restatement of the first movement, as if it had passed through the filter of the second movement Scherzoid, acquiring some of its grit and squawk in the process.