Tiny Oblivion

Tiny Oblivion is based on discarded material from my piano concerto, Meditation on Dust, which I wrote for Karl Larson in 2015. In both works, my aim was to use the piano’s unique ability to rapidly build complex clouds of sonority in order to highlight the resonance and decay that follows such an event. Often, at least to my ears, the decaying space between sounds conjures an imagine of deep space. The title is something of a dark humor acceptance and reference to the fact that our ultimate fate is to die and then eventually turn into particles that will forever break down into smaller particles, spreading out over unfathomable vast distances in an ever expanding and cooling universe. So for all the commotion associated with one’s life, we all in the end get to have our own little tiny oblivion.