James Scott Balentine

Clarinet and Bassoon

Composer's Notes:

Strange Loops was commissioned by clarinetist Robert Walzel, intended to be performed and recorded by Walzel and bassoonist brother Scott Walzel and pianist Steven Harlos in 2018. The premiere took place at ClarinetFest 2018 in Ostend, Belgium, with Gary Whitman, bass clarinet, in the place of Scott Walzel due to a scheduling conflict.

Strange Loops is one of a series of works drawing on jazz and classical influences and repertoire composed for Robert Walzel utilizing rhythmic and jazz inflections within harmonic and formal structures built on classical traditions of the past several centuries.

The title is a reference to an abstract mathematical and philosophical concept proposed by Douglas Hofstadter, that "arises when, by moving only upwards or downwards through the system, one finds oneself back where one started." It is a hierarchy that is "tangled", an emergent property of relationships - in this case, one of personal longstanding friendship and professional collaboration between the composer and Robert and Scott Walzel, and a vague juxtaposition of musical genres - jazz and classical - that the composer would like to think are now, in the year 2018,