Linear A (2021)
for Bohlen-Pierce clarinet and electronics [7:30]

I first contacted Amy Advocat back in 2010 after the Boston Globe ran a feature on her clarinet tuned to the Bohlen-Pierce scale, a microtonal mode based on odd partial ratios which repeats at the twelfth rather than at the octave. Ten years later, we recorded Linear A, which takes its name from the ancient Minoan system of writing encoded on the Phaistos Disc as a spiral of pictograms. Again using loops as the primary source for the electronics, the interaction between clarinet and computer explores the many ways a single line can be manipulated: echoed, transposed, splintered, zig-zagged, chopped into bubbling snippets. In the final minutes, from a fragmented backdrop a line re-emerges, is harmonized with itself, and gradually realigns into a pale four-voice chorale that concludes the piece.