Artist's Statement

As soon as the opportunity to choose the Flipside Record showcase appeared in an email, a list of ideas to convey came to mind. I imagined creating music that would be rich in stylistic flavors; bluesy, funky, Appalachian, texturally rich, kaleidoscope like, edgy and unique. I decided to pair the cello with the low minstrel banjo & the cajón to help hold it all together.

I started with a sketch for the cello, and then began exploring some motivic ideas on the minstrel banjo. The shifting key centers elude from sounding like G minor, to utilizing the pitches in D minor. However, the Eb pitch more fully expressing the G minor key center doesn’t appear until the banjo enters, and when it does, E natural is prominent and the Eb only occurs in passing. The E natural pitch is pivotal towards navigating ultimately to C major, but not until the end is that clear.

Unexpectedly, I discovered a way to ‘flip’ tunes. Once the banjo enters the picture, the cello outlines a simple pizzicato accompaniment, which later proves to work in an interesting complement to the opening cello theme. Once handed over to the banjo, it becomes “banjified” with ornaments reminiscent of fragments of banjo tunes heard before!

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