I’m excited to announce that I am having a piece premiered soon! Come to Nief Norf’s virtual concert this April 9 at 7pm Eastern time to see the public premiere of my work for solo Saxophone, The Alibi! What will YOU be doing on April 9th so that you get away with it? Here‘s the event.
Nief Norf is a Tennessee-based new music organization. I was set to attend their summer festival last year, which was cancelled for obvious reasons. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to collaborate with Saxophonist Allison Adams for this project even though I couldn’t attend in-person. You can learn more about Nief Norf at their website.
Early in the process of writing this piece, I had a document titled “motives for saxophone.” Sick of the word ‘motive’, I decided to replace it with the word ‘alibi’ because I thought it was a funny wordplay. Thus The Alibi was born.
The Alibi is an abstract work of detective fiction, inspired by Noir and by the detective shows like Monk and Colombo that I used to watch with my parents. The performer plays the part of the villain in the episode, and the detective is about to expose them. While they begin composed, with tightly-controlled agility in the middle register, they must spin an ever-wider web of lies as the musical register expands outwards, until it all unravels. The center tears itself apart, and the truth—a pitchy multiphonic, embedded within but obscured by the alibi—is all that’s left.
Jimmy Levi - Composer 