Hypnotic Spiral (2025) – 10′
for Piccolo, Percussion, and Playback (which can be downloaded here)
Performances
Premiered by Mary Kay Fink and Dylan Moffitt, November 23 2025 at The Music Settlement, Cleveland OH
Recording
Public recording will be available soon. In the meantime, please contact me to obtain a recording.
Program Notes
Hypnotic Spiral pulls the listener into a sonic vortex—a space where sounds loop, mutate, and dissolve. The piccolo and percussion come in and out of tension with one another, sometimes fusing, sometimes drifting apart, but always part of the same shifting body. The piece creates a dreamlike state that feels at once continuous and non-continuous, where time stretches, fractures, and reforms.
The orientation of the music shifts throughout the piece: sometimes it’s beat-oriented, grounded in pulse and repetition; other times it’s phrase-oriented, shaped by gesture, breath, or contour. It makes extensive use of carefully notated microtones, drawing from non-Western tuning systems and the influence of Middle Eastern music.
At the heart of Hypnotic Spiral is Tarab, which is the Arabic word for musical ecstasy. Rather than progressing through harmony or narrative form, the piece builds intensity through immersion, subtle transformation, and sinking ever deeper into its microtonal universe.
Hypnotic Spiral is dedicated to Mary Kay Fink, Dylan Moffitt, Lauren Zwonik and Sam Wetzel without whom it would not exist.