1.0Pacific Serenadeshttp://pacser.orgMark Carlson, Artistic Directorhttp://pacser.org/author/markcarlson/Composer Profile: Kenneth Froelich - Pacific Serenadesrich600338<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="CEUuzewqrJ"><a href="http://pacser.org/news/composer-profile-kenneth-froelich/">Composer Profile: Kenneth Froelich</a></blockquote><iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="http://pacser.org/news/composer-profile-kenneth-froelich/embed/#?secret=CEUuzewqrJ" width="600" height="338" title="“Composer Profile: Kenneth Froelich” — Pacific Serenades" data-secret="CEUuzewqrJ" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">
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The piece that Pacific Serenades commissioned him to write, and which we will be premiering on our upcoming concerts, is Piano Quartet No. 1: Mirror. He had written a great deal of wind music in the preceding year, including Portraits of Mt. Rushmore for the US Air Force Brass in Blue, a subset of the US Heartland Band in Omaha, which commissioned the work. The USAF Brass in Blue premiered the work at Mt. Rushmore last year. After that, he said to himself, “I need to write something that isn’t brass and winds. I need a change.” And so he welcomed the opportunity to write a piece for strings and piano. He described the piece to me as “primarily tonal, but also modal, octatonic, and bitonal—shifting rapidly from one key to another. It has less jazz in it than some of my other works, as I wanted the piano quartet to be more classically oriented. There are hints of chant in the piece, and the introduction is chant-like, even hymn-like. Originally I had a concept for the piece as rooted in political relationships, but I abandoned that. That didn’t feel authentic to me, and I always want what I am saying as a composer to be authentic, to be in my own voice.”