Come To|Hypnic Jerk

instrumentation: pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, violoncello)
duration: c. 6’00”
dedication: to the 2017 Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble
premiere: July 18th, 2017 by Brian Allred, Nick Walshe, Tyler Cunningham, Huizi Zhang, Ludek Wojtkowski, and Diana Yusupov; 2017 Atlantic Music Festival-Waterville, ME

 Come To|Hypnic Jerk
is a piece that focuses on perception and consciousness. Technically speaking a “hypnic jerk” is defined as involuntary twitch which occurs just as a person is beginning to fall asleep, often causing them to awaken suddenly for a moment. In other words, it is that feeling that you have fallen into your bed after you had previously thought you had fully become asleep. In the Spring of 2017, I began to experience this phenomenon during the day when I was fully awake. A sudden shock of oversensitive awareness would inexplicably rush to me. This caused me to create a musical narrative where individual instruments snap in and out of time with each other, disorient themselves, then settle with their own trajectory. 