Tension Studies 2010
date completed
2010
duration
23'
instrumentation
percussion, e.gtr, electronics
commission
The Living Earth Show
premiere
January 2011, in San Francisco, CA
additional version
2 perc, e.gtr, electronics
I - Tension Study
II - Petroleum Days
Program Note by Samuel Adams
These two works represent the beginning of an important artistic relationship with Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews, who together form the Living Earth Show. In many ways, all of my electroacoustic works stem from these two studies, which explore the tension between artificial and natural resonances, and which are fleshed out with primarily metallic colors.
I remain deeply indebted to Andy and Travis, and am so glad to have had many opportunites to collaborate and explore.
-Samuel Adams
press
"The evening’s most successful elements came from composers whose work is already familiar. Samuel Adams’ “Tension Study No. 1,” in a slinky rendition by guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson, offered appealingly trippy textures that bent in and out of focus."
SF Chronicle ↗
"Adams’s Tension Studies was an exercise in restraint and implication. The version presented was for guitar, two percussionists, and electronics, though there are a few variations of this piece floating around the internet with slightly different instrumentations. (I wonder why Adams keeps tinkering with it.) In all versions, though, the piece is sparsely populated, with guitar and percussion playing plaintive, bending notes and chords while gorgeous electronic textures fade in and out. It’s easy to read this piece as ambient, though the gulfs of near-silence and subtle interlocking rhythms suggest something else to me, like the shape of a building suggested by an unfinished construction site. For all its outward calm, there is an undercurrent of something more unsettled. The overall effect is mesmerizing."
NewMusicBox ↗
“An epic and thrilling piece in design and execution.”
ICAREIFYOULISTEN ↗