In our contemporary world, musicians imagine, create, and perform music in two ways—one, by writing and reading it from the page, and two, by improvising and playing it by ear.  A good musical education offers practice and experience in both. In doing so, music education can provide practice and experience in the two most prevalent models for problem solving and cooperative existence in our culture—the hierarchical management model and the cooperative creative consensus model.   An Introduction to the Moon combines two distinctly different and wholly essential musical practice —music of the page and music of the ear.

Using a form found in our everyday culture, the partitioned carton, I created a musical container with several partitions or sections.  I composed nine unified sections of music which the musicians rehearse and perform in the traditional manner by reading and reproducing exactly what I have written for them.  These nine sections surround eight sections which are reserved for music the musicians create themselves by improvising and performing by ear. You might think of the form of my piece as:

Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page-EAR-Page

In each of the eight EAR sections a poem is read.  Each poem refers, in some way, to the moon. During rehearsal for the piece, the musicians listen to each poem and respond musically by improvising their impressions, discussing their improvisations, and deciding among themselves which musical ideas best work with their ideas about the poetry.

And so, An Introduction to the Moon is not my composition, it is our composition—you, the musicians, and me.  I hope that you experience our work as poetic in every way and that when the music has left the air, you will have met the moon and remain suspended in its peaceful light.