No Longer Suitable for Framing, for clarinet and trombone
Clarinet and Trombone Recording: https://on.soundcloud.com/nAUexzHYlLOirk9S1p
8:30
Written in 1999 for Sandra Potkay Jackson, clarinet, and David Jackson, trombone. It was premiered by Sandy and David the next summer on an Interlochen Arts Camp faculty recital. I re-used the same pitch material in each of the seven snapshots, but with the instruments in different relationships each time. Those musical relationships drew to a certain extent on relationships in marriage--I was aware that Sandy and David had recently married, and my own marriage was near its end, so I had many positive and negative images to work with. The snapshots are each very short and intense and the relationships are not always positive (one person talking, the other not listening, for instance), but some are playful and connected. It's important not to take this programmatic image too seriously though! I consider No Longer Suitable for Framing to be very virtuosic, both in terms of the demands on the individual instrumentalists and in terms of their very intense chamber music relationship.