Greg Beyer/Arcomusical:
PROGRAM and NOTES
Fios e linhas (2020)
Gregory Beyer (b. 1973)
Program Note

“Fios e linhas” (Portuguese, “wires and lines”) situates the berimbau as an “inner voice” in the context of a mallet quartet. The berimbau’s minor third tuning is the result of the placement of its gourd exactly six elevenths of the way down the staff, dividing the wire into two unequal parts (6:5). This segmentation generated both the opening thematic material as well as the original formal structure of the work, which I planned to last for five minutes and thirty seconds (i.e. eleven 30” segments).

The opening theme is derived from a short etude for the same minor third tuning that I composed in 2007 in Poland during a percussion festival and summer course. Inspired by Luciano Berio’s Linea (1973), the piece begins in strict unison between vibraphone and berimbau. The marimba joins in soon thereafter at which point playful rhythmic counterpoint, long tones and tremoli are introduced. The trio soon becomes an extended conversational accompaniment underneath a contrapuntal duet between bass marimba and glockenspiel.

In the works second section, an eight-measure melodic theme is introduced and is repeated and ornamented with increasing density until it climaxes in percussive stick clicking that nods to Steve Reich’s Sextet. This percussive interlude gives way to a vibraphone solo over harmonic changes inspired by Pat Metheny’s “Tell Her You Saw Me” (1992).

The work’s final section, inspired by Brazilian rhythmic idioms, is a sort of baião in 3/4 with a very clear 2:3 clave pattern. Over this groove, the berimbau and vibraphone play a quickly moving melodic duet in rhythmic unison. The caxixi playing that drive the piece home is inspired by the pioneering musical language of Mestre Naná Vasconcelos (1944-2016).

I am deeply grateful to I-Jen Fang and the University of Virginia (UVA) Percussion Ensemble for commissioning this piece on the occasion of her annual Night of Percussion in 2020. We finally and happily premiered the work at UVA in 2022 in the aftermath of the pandemic.

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Indra Looks to the Sky (2025)
Krissy Bergmark (b. 1988)
Program Note

“As I’ve evolved as an artist, I’ve become much more of an improviser than a composer. So when I wrote this piece, I wanted to interact with Arcomusical conversationally, as an improviser. Although I knew I wouldn’t be “surprised” as I often am during improvisation, I still wanted this music to feel like a familiar conversation, like sharing a memory with an old friend or family member. Piecing the story together, we remember all the same details and the main points, but it’s never told in exactly the same way.

Indra Looks to the Sky is about immense process. Indra is a Vedic Deva (divine being), also depicted in Buddhist and Jain texts, and known for their “net” or “web,” which is infinite in scope and represents the interconnectivity of all things. The philosopher Alan Watts, known for interpreting Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy to Western audiences, describes Indra’s web this way:

"Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image."

As anyone who has created something of scale knows, there are flow states involved in churning out an immense amount of work, sometimes very late at night, when ideas are emerging and there’s always more and more and more to do. But as that feeling flows for a long time and then ebbs, there is a moment of reprieve, something like dropping back into the world as it exists in the physical realm, from somewhere else, the world of ideas, to take stock of what has been done.

The detailed editing this score required was challenging for me. The work itself is dense and layered, with players often moving from serving the expression of a melody in one note to playing a counter melody in the next, making the group’s dynamic execution critically important to the clarity of my musical ideas.

And in the midst of working on this piece, amongst an endless stream of edits, tweaks, and repairs, I was reminded of the stories of Indra and couldn’t help but think of how Indra must have felt while crafting the web of the universe. and then an image came to me of a person sitting in a comfortable chair, with this immeasurable quilt of a web stretched out before them, having worked for a very long time, perhaps an eternity, and pausing for a moment to look out the window, towards the sky, in that reflective feeling during a moment of creative ebb.” - Krissy Bergmark