First: The Greek xenos, broadly meaning ‘stranger’, whose nuances run the gamut from hostility to hospitality (and is regularly applied to practices of microtonal, i.e. xenharmonic, music). Here it remains ambiguous, as an encounter is staged on the two vibraphones between equal temperament and Dan Lewis’ exquisitely crafted just intonation system. A range of aligned and ‘just off’ pairings in tonality and time leads to an unsettled settling.
Second: Peter Garland’s Basketweave Elegies have been a blessing and balm for my own vibraphone practice for the past year or two. This work is inspired by the interlacing, non-repetitive patterning of much of his work, albeit distending those tendencies via my own method/madness. Nevertheless, as Garland wrote in the score for Coyote’s Bones, “This is "zen", man: it should as simple as a flower. Play as if your life depended on it. It does.”
