Sticky with Gin - for solo baritone, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet. Text by Denis Johnson. Premiered in June 2023 by loadbang as part of the Longy School of Music’s Divergent Studio.

Heat (excerpt) by Denis Johnson

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth. It's beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin, Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover, streaming with hatred in the heat as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones, and such a last light—full of spheres and zones…

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This piece was written in preparation for the 2023 Divergent Studio at Longy School of Music to be played by loadbang. I am beyond grateful to have had the opportunity to write a piece for a group whose playing is as graceful and electric as its repertoire is forward-looking. The vocal part is set to the first eight lines of the poem “Heat” by the writer Denis Johnson, whose work has profoundly influenced my conceptions of dynamism and turbulence in art.