The impatient explorer

a seven-movement song cycle for countertenor, B-flat clarinet, trombone, theremin, kalimba, and banjo (1997), 16’

Texts by Kenneth Patchen

The musical processes in The Impatient Explorer attempt to derive exclusively from implications already present in the poetry of the Ohio-born iconoclast Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972). At the same time, his poetry is primitive and experimental, radical and naïve, almost folksy and old-fashioned. But it is always direct. The unlikely combination of countertenor, theremin, clarinet, kalimba, banjo and trombone is an attempt to sonically reflect the resolution of Patchen's many seeming contradictions. (If a kalimba is unavailable, a glockenspiel can be substituted.)