STEVEN DAVERSON (b.1985): Escher's Pharmacy for Ensemble, Elusive Tangibility II: firelife, Elusive Tangibility III: Clandestine Haze (all ensemble recherche) Elusive Tangibility IV: (Tsukimi) for Mezzo-Soprano and Ensemble (Angelika Luz [mezzo]), Elusive Tangibility V: Zugunruhe for Ensemble, Schattenwanderer for Clarinet and Ensemble (Nina Janßen-Deinzer [clarinet], Ensemble Modern).

Description: As the titles and subtitles suggest, the Elusive Tangibility cycle is all about impermanence, evanescence, ephemeral phenomena glimpsed - however vividly - but neither able to be touched nor held permanently and unambiguously in memory. The instrumentation for each successive piece in the set varies, generally increasing in size and diversity of ensemble, allowing an ever greater range of transient musical gestures to interact and then evaporate. It should be noted that these pieces are very precisely notated, and the apparently chaotic sequence of disparate events that they contain is in fact a highly controlled process of musical entropy. The other two works are also part of an ongoing cycle, in which the interaction of sounds and the duration and formal development of the entire set are predetermined, so that the details of the acoustic events, blurring the border between timbre and harmony, are subject to change even as they are defined, as elements in a constantly shifting labyrinth analogous to that in the novel 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski from which the cycle takes its inspiration.