Hazy Moonlight

"Hazy Moonlight for soprano saxophone, percussion, and electroacoustics takes its inspiration from five haiku by poet Wally Swist:

thistledown seeds the falls
a full moon shatters
into stars

slipping through moonlight
a waterthrush rushes
rock to rock

cloud wisps across the moon
gusts of rain patter among
piles of fallen leaves

bracing the chill
moonlight rushes
in the icy river

mountain laurel blossoms
a luminous moth
ascends into moonlight

Swist’s vivid scenes depict the moon’s appearance across the seasons, creating an organic foundation for the work’s structure and soundscape. The instrumentalists’ virtuosic foray through Swist’s evocative work conjure varied images of the moon as a brilliant force, a mysterious beacon, and a luminous orb. Hazy Moonlight was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University for the Bent Frequency Duo, and is dedicated to both with admiration and appreciation. The haiku appear with the author’s permission and are published in Modern Haiku, The Silence Between Us (Taylorville, IL: Brooks Books, 2005), and The Windbreak Pine (Ormskirk, UK: Snapshot Press, 2016.)"