Groove

Groove is the result of feeling stuck, frustrated, irritated and annoyed. In the fall of 2001 I was hard at work on an Epic, Serious, Important solo piano piece, when I hit a wall and simply could not get anywhere with it. Then one night I went to a classical chamber music concert by San Francisco Conservatory faculty, and I found myself so annoyed by the polite applause, by the players’ dandy little bowties, by the tastefulness and refinement of their playing, by all of the formalities and niceties that seemed to get in the way of direct communication of the music. After the performance, I went up to the practice room and vented by jamming on my bass clarinet. I liked what I was coming up with – it was raw, aggressive, unrefined and direct, everything I was missing from classical music at the time – and I started writing some of it down. Over the next few days I got down all of the ideas that would form the basis of ‘Groove’. I worked on this material off and on over the course of about a year until I finally molded it into its (hopefully) coherent yet still raw final form.