Friction Dwellers (2009) Instrumentation: soprano, trumpet and piano Length: 9:00 Text: Taken from quotations of Chinese folk songs Premiere:      May 27, 2009      Embryonic Noise Concert Series      The Center for Arts in Natick, Natick, MA      Mu-Xuan Lin, soprano; Travis Alford, trumpet; Dan VanHassel, piano Program Note: Friction Dwellers was written for the group Test Pattern, which consists of Travis Alford on trumpet, Mu-Xuan Lin, soprano, and myself on piano. Everyone in this group is primarily a composer, but is also an accomplished performer on their instrument. This gave the group a unique mix of personalities, which I thought I should reflect in the piece I wrote for us. Each instrumental part has its own distinct character based on some aspect of the person who plays it. For example, since Mu-Xuan is Taiwanese, I took this as an opportunity to work with quotations from Chinese folk songs. My music often quotes or samples from a wide variety of musical genres, but I have always been somewhat hesitant to make use of music from outside my own culture because I felt it risked ending up as a superficial exoticism which would be at best musically uninteresting and at worst offensive to the culture in question. However, it is too interesting a musical avenue to just ignore so I figured that by working closely with Mu-Xuan on the composition of this piece, I could hopefully avoid these pitfalls. I am particularly indebted to her for help with the text and translation.