Impromptu is a short, bright, up-tempo piece commissioned in 1975 by KTCA Public Television (Minnesota), to be used as introduction music for a community news and information show. In conversations about what kind of music should reflect the personality of the show, “optimism,” “serious lightness,” and “sense of positive outcome” were all given as goals for the sound of the music—at the time a strange request for a serious, post-modern, 24-year-old newly minted composer! I composed Impromptu for flute, oboe (or clarinet) and bassoon. It’s approximately one and a half minutes long, in ABA form, with mildly mixed meters (5/8, 3/8, and 6/8) set on a lively constant eighth note pulse.

-Libby Larsen, 2018