Figures in Balance - for baritone saxophone, percussion, and piano. Performed by Contemporary Art Music Project (CAMP) on June 12, 2026 at Timucua Arts Foundation in Orlando, FL.

Figures in Balance is a sandwich with a good amount of meat and two very thin slices of bread.

This piece was inspired by the paintings of Argentine artists Alfredo Hlito and Virgilio Villalba. I had seen Villalba’s Untitled on display at New York City’s MoMA in Winter 2026, and I was drawn to the warmth of the colors and the off-balance feeling generated by the skewing of lines. After researching the work of Villalba and his colleagues, I became entranced by the paintings of his contemporary Alfredo Hlito. The stark contrast between the two figures in his Efigies en equilibrio felt especially musical, and the idea for this piece emerged from becoming lost in this painting.

In Efigios en equilibrio, the two figures are starkly separated by two opposite planes. As the onlooker’s gaze shifts back and forth between these two planes, the whole experience of the artwork comes together. In my piece, meanwhile, there exist two opposite textures. The first is quick, light, jagged, virtuosic. The second is slow, resonant, curved, and methodical. The first texture lasts for only a minute, while the second texture slowly develops over the course of almost the whole rest of the piece. At the very end, however, the first texture suddenly reawakens, rather infected by the evolution of the slow music that precedes it. Whereas music may only be heard linearly through time, looking at a painting is a non-linear process. When looking at Efigios en equilibrio, one’s gaze may start on one figure, then go back and forth between the two until one feels satisfied. In Figures in Balance, my decision to briefly return to the first texture at the work’s end is informed by this non-linearity of visual art.