A piano work blending Western tonality with Arabic maqam colors, the piece rides a persistent pulse, evoking vast desert stillness and the flowing movement of travelers across shifting sands.
Premiered by: Dzovig Markarian (piano)
Venue: Meng Hall, Fullerton, California
Shifting Sands constantly wavers unpredictably between the distinctive strands of Western and Arabic music, seeking to fuse the evocative, other-worldly sound of the “maqam” (scale in Arabic) within a Western scheme and tonality. The structure of the work is influenced by “tarab,” the Arabic word for a continuous state of musical ecstasy. One of the main ideas of the piece involves an undying, repetitive pulse from the piano that sets up an uninterrupted framework for the passage of roving scalar runs that dance all over the piano. In an abstract sense, that music is akin to the monolithic presence of the vast Arabian deserts as a backdrop for the hundreds of thousands of nomads that have traversed their ancient sands.
2015 ASCAP Morton Gould Winner
