In the Midst of Flux (2009)

For symphony orchestra
2 + picc, 2 + Eng. hn, 2 + b. cl, 2 + contra
4, 3, 3, 1
hp
pn/cel
timp, 3 perc
strings
Duration: 9 minutes

Review of the world premiere:

“The second half opened with remarkable music by Iranian composer Gity Razaz. In the Midst of Flux is the work of a master, albeit a young one (she was born in Teheran in 1986). A set of loosely related episodes, this music evokes her emigré family’s lost world. Skirting the dangers of mere nostalgia, she summons real memory (always unsettled and whirling) before us in all its fragmentary and jagged incompleteness. Full of gorgeous color, the piece shimmers with longing and uncertainty until a final bell-like thunderclap of sound suspends both time and memory. Breathtaking.” –The San Diego Union-Tribune

Program Note:

In the Midst of Flux is a tone poem structured as a series of musical vignettes made up of a compact core of material. Though each episodic passage evokes an independent sound world — lush lyrical passages, bombastic rhythmic moments, chamber-like sections building up into cadences — they follow one another to form a dramatic trajectory, an inevitable arrival of different worlds at a single focal point.

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