An initial version of Pulled from Time was composed in 2020 during the globally devastating COVID 19 pandemic and during the final months of my only sister’s decline and ultimate death. This piece is dedicated to the memory of my sister, Pamela, and the strength she showed throughout her life. She passed well before her time.

This was commissioned by and composed for Anthony DiSanza, Professor of Percussion Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I appreciate the humility, tenderness, precision, joy and ferocity with which he approaches music and hope future performances of Frida Kahlo’s

Tweetstorm will continue to celebrate these qualities. Images of Kahlo’s paintings referenced in Wahlund’s piece can be found below. (BW)

In operating with three musical strata (tonally and metrically different and usually without rhythmic congruence), the music might be described as conflicted-polyphony, where the interruptive nature of the independent lines tear at the fraying linear perspective.

Sometimes the composer chooses to let one strata dominate, or weaves notes from different strata creating new, boundary-crossing melodies and motifs. Often it is up to the listener to choose the foreground and the background of the music.

The work opens with three clear statements of the core melodic fragment (comprised of six pitches) set in unique metric/rhythmic configurations. This angular, yet simple melody, and the three metric/rhythmic identities serve as the basis for Nørgård’s ever-changing yet seemingly static music.

Following the opening melodic statements, Nørgård wastes no time in digging into the polyphonic underpinnings of the composition. Using synthesized drum and chime sounds, the multiple layers of the music are plain to hear. In persistent reference to the Golden Ratio, the rhythmic material consists of layered subdivisions of 3, 5 and 8 notes per beat.

Nørgård ultimately explores the polyphonic layering of melodic, metric and rhythmic material using an acoustic multiple percussion set-up (which presents the opening melodic material, in inversion, on six tuned drums with counterpoint woven on a metal pipe), as well as a combination of keyboard percussion instruments (MalletKAT, vibraphone and bass marimba).

Nørgård abandons the conflicted-polyphonic texture for a brief period while applying his minimalistic “waves” principles to the six-pitch inverted melodic fragment on tom toms, bringing emerging melodies to the fore through gradual dynamic and rhythmic change.

Near the end of the work, Nørgård quotes the end of a simple waltz melody by Adolf Wölfli as the basis of a kaleidoscopic fabric of tones. Wolfli spent most of his life institutionalized where he painted, wrote poetry and composed works of art that demonstrated a combination of madness and genius.

The tension between the simple melody and the ambivalent polyphony experienced at the end of the work points back to Nørgård’s vision of his boyhood years: the pre-sentiment of “a music that arose out of a single melody that rushed around through all the instruments of the orchestra.” Energy Fields Forever was composed for – and in collaboration with – Gert Sørensen. (Notes by G. Sørensen & A. Di Sanza)

The seed for Walking on Stones was planted in my mind while walking on a stone beach in Door County, WI. I recorded the amazing sounds of the rocks beneath my feet and immediately started thinking about a musical environment in which to use the recording. I collaborated with my friend Marc Hill to create the fixed media file, initially giving him only vague musical parameters for each section. We worked through many revisions of the fixed media material as I built the solo drumming ideas. This is our second collaboration in the realm of drumming solos with fixed media having previously created Wood & Water for solo frame drum and fixed media