The Silver Pit Jams for bassoon, cello, bass, and piano (1998).
This quartet revisits the age of the silent movie, looking back to a time when movie houses employed whatever instrumentalists were available to perform an eclectic range of styles. For instance, Verdi might be performed next to the music of Stephen Foster, or a Joplin rag might be pitted against a Mozart sonata. In the end however, all of these styles would support a common storyline that often featured the stereotypical hero in the white hat, the maiden in distress, and the sinister villain in the black cape. The musical gestures within this work should be exaggerated to reflect the characteristics of such a melodrama. The Silver Pit Jams was premiered in 1999 at Music99, an annual festival of new music at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.
