Description

Femme Fatale was written for the “Rock Hotel Piano Festival” in New York City hosted by a contemporary music collaborative known as “Vision Into Arts,” which sought to commission 30 three-minute works for solo piano to be presented together in a single concert played by 30 pianists of high repute. As one might imagine with only three minutes of time to fill and a veritable stockpile of virtuosos, the majority of the pieces were at break-neck tempos displaying a peak level of pyrotechnics in every measure. Femme Fatale was no exception. Given minimal time to write and deliver the piece into the performers hands (I believe it was something like 3 weeks), I devised a number scheme to predetermine a road map of the complex rhythms that came to resemble, in essence, a highly elaborated Latin Dance somewhat reminiscent of the stylings of Chick Corea (I had “Spain” on the brain and I went with it). The piece is very episodic and contains several contrasting sections with markings like”muy caliente,” “seductively” and “psychotic,” but at the same time is almost obsessive in its strict use of a limited set of melodic and harmonic materials.