Racer Session #112 | Kristian Garrard | April 1, 2012

“Cupid Boy”

By Kristian Garrard

*** Warning, get there early, the piece may or may not begin before 8pm, just so you know ;) ***

I decided not to focus on any one musical element or theme in composing this piece, rather I just went with intuition and let the elements fall into place. The piece is organized as a list of events with cues played by different members of the band, which advance the piece to the next section. Only a few of the movements are actually notated music, the rest is written out in plain english, eg: “horns swell in and out on polyphonic tones” etc etc. The rhythm section holds a single groove throughout most of the thing, until the end where, well, you’ll see what happens. 

The inspiration for the different elements of this piece are from a lot of places. I really like the sort of endless “Motorik” jams that Sonic Youth frequently does, so we’re chugging our way through the whole thing, creating sort of a rhythmic drone/trance vibe. Inspiration for the written segments of the piece come from a choral piece I’ve been really into lately, called “Apologetica”, by Daniel Lentz. It uses a beautiful system of harmonic movement that I can’t claim to understand, but I tried to sort of imitate it with the horn parts in my piece.

The band for this is:

• Ivan Arteaga - Clarinet & Alto Sax

• Andrew Swanson - Alto Sax

• Neil Welch - Tenor Sax

• Aaron Otheim - Keyboard

• Luke Bergman - Bass

• Clip Icasiano - Drums

• Kristian Garrard - Guitar

• Tape Deck - Drums