Asphalt...YIELD! and yet (2023)

I. slope, cast upon: view

II. motzaei – unpause/resume

III. From (above) in spite of

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World Premiere – May 31, 2025

Montage Music Society

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Stephen Redfield, violin

Walter Haman, cello

Debra Ayers, piano

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I am always mesmerized by the visual artwork of the late American artist Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud is known for his paintings of cakes and pies and gumball machines, but his cityscapes fascinate me most of all his works. Often depicting a caricaturized San Francisco with impossibly steep hills, exaggerated building and street sizes, and multiple perspectives at the same time, these cityscapes seem to always challenge my sense of up and down (and sometimes even give me vertigo).

 

During the summer of 2023, I found myself blissfully sitting in an inner tube floating down a calm stream in the north woods of Wisconsin, what I thought would be an escape from my usual fast-paced Manhattan habitat, and I noticed something strange. The tranquil waves were phasing away from me in a particular direction and speed such that it felt as if I had been slowly, yet endlessly falling. This sensation instantly transported me back into the city, this time into a maze of Thiebaud’s streets, in which I was experiencing the exact same falling sensation from the pull of Thiebaud’s near perpendicular slopes. Asphalt…YIELD! and yet, commissioned by Montage Music Society, is a musical trilogy based on three of Thiebaud’s cityscapes: “Ripley Street Ridge” (1976), “Apartment Hill” (1980), and “Downgrade” (1979).

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