About the Music

Incalmo for bass clarinet and piano was composed in 2021 for Timothy Bonenfant, bass clarinet and Martha Ann Saywell, piano. We thank the composer for sharing the following program note about the work:

Incalmo is the technique of constructing piece of art by fusing two or more colors of blown glass. The process is thought to have originated in medieval Italy. The name, in the Venetian dialect of Italian, literally means joining two parts. The glass artist blows two separate bubbles of glass, opens them, and then joins them together to form one bubble, aimed at obtaining multiple areas of different colors on the same surface.

As the title for this bass clarinet and piano duet, Incalmo does not refer so much to combining the two instruments, but rather to the process by which the musical materials are fused together in a manner intended to go beyond the solo/accompaniment model, treating the bass clarinet and piano as sonic equals. In essence, the process of blending their sonorities together while each maintains its coloristic identity.

Score: 8 pages, spiral bound; part: 4 pages, booklet. Extended-range instrument NOT required.

Listen to the premiere performance!

PDF Edition

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About the Composer

Daniel Adams (b. 1956, Miami, FL) is a Professor of Music at Texas Southern University in Houston where he has taught courses in music theory and composition since 1988. Adams holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Music from the University of Miami (1981) and a Bachelor of Music from Louisiana State University (1978). He is the composer of numerous published musical compositions and the author of many articles and reviews on various topics related to Twentieth Century percussion music, musical pedagogy, and the music of Texas. His book entitled The Solo Snare Drum was published by Honey Rock in 2000. He is also the author of two entries published in 2009 in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History 1896 to the Present and has authored a revision of the Miami, Florida entry for the New Grove Dictionary of American Music (2013). Adams has served as a panelist and lecturer nationally and internationally, on topics ranging from music composition pedagogy to faculty governance. In 2011 he presented a composition Master Class at Ewha University in Seoul, South Korea. His music has been performed throughout the United States, and in Spain, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Turkey, Costa Rica, Argentina, Canada, and South Korea. His music is recorded on Capstone, Ravello, Summit, Albany, and Potenza Records.