“In Transit” never gets anywhere, yet it also doesn’t stay anywhere. The piece is constantly fading from one kind of music to another. Different key areas are established, each one becoming more concrete, then dissolving just as quickly as a new key comes to prominence. As certain pitches are played more frequently to drive the harmonic progress, beautiful melodic moments arise, but they never stay around long or appear again in quite the same way. The piece ends where it began, if even more nebulous, and we realize we would have done better to simply enjoy the ride instead of fixating on the destination.

“In Transit” is an allegory for the way we experience travel in a modern era. Our attention is always on how close we are to our destination. We are vaguely aware of the places we pass while in transit, but we don’t usually try to relate them to where we are headed. We experience these places as random, isolated moments, ultimately irrelevant to our goals.

Performances