Andrew Ardizzoia

Alto Saxophone, Trumpet, and Piano

Composer's Note:

Distances Between Us was commissioned by Kindall NeSmith and Todd Smith in the fall of 2010. The couple requested a piece that reflected the unorthodox nature of their relationship"”much of the time they'd been "together" had actually been spent apart due to graduate school, jobs, and so on. The project had a personal resonance for me, since my partner and I had lived apart on and off over the past several years. I used this together/ apart dichotomy as my conceptual basis for the work.

I chose a small pitch collection that contains both the two fundamental pitches of Kindall and Todd's instruments (E-flat and B-flat) and the tones that lie a half-step below each (D and A). This half-step idea became a fundamental aspect of my thematic material and influenced my choice of subsequent scales. The outer boundaries of this collection, A and E-flat, became the tonal "arms" of the piece, which rotate around C, the pitch equidistant between them. Thus the tonal center C served as a meeting place where the two instruments could finally come together. The piece consists of a series of solos and duos with varying amounts of commentary and support from the piano. It finally climaxes in an arching, ecstatic melody before drawing to a wistful, contended conclusion.