Fast Track by Jonathan Chenette

Fast Track was commissioned by Red Cedar Chamber Music of Marion, Iowa for the Boland-Dowdall Flute and Guitar Duo as part of their Artistic Celebration of the 21st Century. Seven composers were asked to compose music inspired by works of art from the permanent collection of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Each piece was to be brief (three to four-and-a-half minutes), with the whole set premiered at the museum early in the year 2000 in conjunction with an exhibition featuring the selected artworks. This music for Sam Gilliam's "Fast Track" draws inspiration from the jazzy energy of the print along with its paradoxical combination of density and airy lightness. Syncopated rhythms and darting melodies abound. The image's prominent structural element of a circle inscribed in a square led to the opening musical ideas: the guitar's solid four-note chords built of harmonic fourths and the flute's constrained, circular melodies. Textured white veils rising from the bottom of the image gave rise to a gravity-defying melodic figure built of ascending intervals that grow ever larger, which becomes the basis for later sections of the music. In the end, of course, the notes have an energy of their own, but both the music and Gilliam's image evoke the frenetic pace of life on the fast track.

Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and attended the University of Louisville where he received his B.A. in fine art and his M.A. in painting. Since his first grant from the NEA in 1967, Gilliam has been acknowledged by a long list of public and private commissions, grants, awards, exhibitions and honorary doctorates. Gilliam lives in Washington D.C. and operates a large studio in the beautiful historic district known as Shaw. The duration of the music is 3 minutes and 15 seconds at the tempo indicated.