Lines & Spaces

The 15 tracks on Thad Anderson’s LINES & SPACES are from his Lines series, based on his compositional technique called “duration lines” that create both structure and polyrhythmic interest. Anderson integrates traditional instruments with fixed media, live processing, and tuned metals to create pieces that are infinitely malleable.

For these compositions, Anderson draws inspiration from poetry, paintings, and some early writings that predict many of the technologies now integrated into daily life. His Route is loosely based on the Emily Dickinson poem, “A Route of Evanescence,” which explores the mesmerizing hummingbird during flight. On Route, one might imagine the interaction between saxophone and electronic playback as representing the hummingbird and its surroundings. Re-Cite was inspired by painter Ellsworth Kelly’s 1951 piece Cite, which used chance practices to create a random arrangement of black and white squares.

The quintet for flutes and fixed media, Through-line, refers to a central theme or idea — an invisible thread that runs from the beginning to the end of work. In this instance, the through-line is both the duration lines that are used throughout the piece and a seven-chord progression that is used in the odd numbered sections.

Using a duration line set, Outside, Looking In features layers of single line fragments that segue and weave between one another. On this solo piano piece, the composer effectively positions the piano as a percussion rather than string instrument. Both As We May Think and Mechanization were inspired by an article by engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974) that appeared in The Atlantic in 1945. In the former, the spoken component of the electronic playback audio derives from an archived interview with the author.