A Kind of Standoff

INSTRUMENTATION
Solo piano
Percussion I: Timpani, Three Roto-toms (about 8” in diameter)
Percussion II: Chimes, Crotales (high octave), Claves, Suspended Cymbal, Concert
Crash Cymbal
Percussion III: Vibraphone*, Xylophone
Percussion IV: Almglocken, Marimba, Vibraphone*
Percussion V: Large (low) Tam-tam, Crotales, Drum set: Snare drum, Three Tom-toms,
Floor tom, Kick drum (pedal bass drum from a drum set), Temple block.
*Percussion III and IV should each have their own vibraphone.
Duration: ca. 20’
We don’t depend on time finally. There is
a balance, a kind of standoff between the
time continuum and the human entity,
our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We
eventually succumb to time, it’s true, but
time depends on us.
–Don DeLillo, Underworld
A Kind of Standoff concerns itself with a phenomenon of the apparent experience of accelerating
time as human beings age and face our inevitable end. The work is cast in a single movement divided
into five sections, each faster than the one preceding it.
The work begins somberly with a sort of passacaglia which presents a lot of the fundamental musical
material for the entire work. As time accelerates, the piano music gives way and almost loses itself in a
wistful, lyrical reverie, only to be brought back down to earth by a further acceleration into a sort of
frenzied, abortive scherzo which itself gives way to even faster music with faint echoes of African
kalimbas and Stravinskian dances in uneven meters. The work finally unravels in a whirlwind of noise
in the final, fastest (and briefest) section which comes to a crashing halt with the silencing slam of a
piano lid representing time’s ultimate hammer blow.
A Kind of Standoff was begun in Alexandria, Virginia in the summer of 2006 and completed in
Clinton, New York that same autumn while beginning two years as artist in residence at Hamilton
College. It is dedicated to Amy Lynn Barber and The Percussion Plus Project, who commissioned the
work.

A Kind of Standoff

by May Phang, piano, The Percussion Plus Project, Armando Bayolo, conductor