Composer Institute: Elliott Miles McKinley, Four Moments

McKinley's "Pocket Symphony" for grand orchestra fits an overwhelming amount of musical ideas into its short duration.  The opening showcases a piercing, pouncing woodwind melody and the intense, jagged sawing of the entire string section.  Loud, heavy vibraphone chords are well integrated into the texture, proof that today's composers are using percussion sections as equal players in the orchestra rather than just additional layers of color for strictly rhythmical purposes.  The first "moment" also features a short, quick violin solo that stomps around over the top of the ensemble like a passage out of Kurt Weill's concerto for violin and wind orchestra. 

The third section begins with some of the edgiest and most wonderful orchestral writing I have heard in recent memory.  Its clear inspiration is jazz, and yet it comes across not as some ironic or irreverent misfit.  McKinley introduces a walking bass line played by the surprisingly fresh combination of bass clarinet and pizzicato double bass section.  The vibraphone rings like an echo from a smoke-bemisted jazz club somewhere long ago while the marimba and trombones "wa-wa-wa" in unison 5-against-2 subdivided rhythms.  This section is magical and quiet.  The high strings trade off single pizzicato pitches between languid flourishes from the cellos and woodwinds.  The final movement emerges seamlessly from these hazy figures, yet somehow seems inevitable, focused, and tight even as the rhythms become more angular and triumphant.

McKinley comes across as thoroughly self-assured as he twists and bends the orchestral idiom into exciting new shapes throughout this symphony, which overall has a character of great warmth and restraint.  The composer mentions a favorite anecdote about Leos Janacek, who drew all his own manuscript paper so that he would have no unnecessary staves that he may feel compelled to fill on the page.  This interest in economy is audible in McKinley's work, its refinements belying a tremendous depth of thought, its construction showing admirable aplomb and individuality.