Album Notes

Todd Brunel and Ara Sarkissian have collaborated on various projects in the past few years. They offer some of their
collaborative improvised compositions on this CD, along with two works that they both enjoy playing: The sonata by Vuk Kulenovic and the Five Bagatelles of Gerald Finzi.

Each collaborative composition is a play on form, exploring different tonalities while utilizing extended techniques on both instruments.

In search of Serenity is a through composed work, that immediately offers a play on the timbral qualities of the clarinet, accompanied by a cascading wash of sound on the piano. A haunting and mystical sound portrait using microtonal fingerings, chromaticism and a deference to the unwieldy.

A Riddle In Time: A play on themes, coupled with a curiosity for mixing form. Development and recapitulation swing through thematic variation, interspersed with sporadic new textures, ending with a question to the answer.

Cross Current: Statement, Answer, development, break…harmonic qualities that reflect late expressionism, a portrait in still life….

The Plan: A definitive variations on a theme ala Shostokovich, winding through a provocative array of melodic fragments, yielding to higher and higher ground, yearning for resolution. At the highest point, mysticism is transplanted from another place entirely, uprooting the entity and settling it back to its starting point.

What If: A kind of tone poem, lost in a place of shrieking translucent blue music.