Mikel Kuehn - Works
Double Labyrinth (1999), for flute and marimba.
Program Note
Double Labyrinth was written in 1998-1999 for flute and marimba duo Kesatuan (Karen DeWig, flute, and Ingrid Gordon, marimba). The title refers to the work’s structure and its effect on the musical texture: each instrument performs the same structural material in an unsynchronized fashion. In the first half of the work, the flute and Marimba collectively traverse a structural labyrinth that determines the details of their musical texture and material. Individually they articulate different paths but are able to converge occasionally (in effect traversing a labyrinth of translucent walls); at these moments they may play the same material exactly or deviate from one another slightly. For the second half of the work, the instruments swap paths. Throughout the piece, each instrument performs the entire labyrinth once. My interest in exploring this kind of musical interplay and the treatment of the duo as a single and intertwined element was spawned by the group’s title (Kesatuan), which is Indonesian for “unity”.