Datura op. 57

"Datura was commissioned by Accessible Contemporary Music and was written in a unique way. I composed the piece in installments over the summer of 2006 and emailed them to Seth Boustead who forwarded them on to the ensemble. In this unique way of working I was able to have time between each installment to think about what would come next and to get feedback from the performers about the music. This is a very new and different way for a composer to work. Usually I write the piece in solitude and then hand it to the performers but writing in installments allows more communications between the performers and the composer and allows the audience to hear the piece as its created. Datura is another series of pieces composer written about Asian plants and flowers. Datura is a very common houseplant in south China and very beautiful but it can also be used as a hallucinogen, usually with unpleasant results. In this piece the composer juxtaposed the other beauty of the plant with the intense inner would it can create by using alternately tranquil and intense musical passages." (Xiaogang Ye)