Program Note:

Thanks to DNA, the double helix is one of nature’s most iconic geometries. Though less common, triple helices - comprised of three offset strands wrapping around the same axis - also exist within biomolecules. This piece imagines each instrument in the trio as providing one strand of a musical triple helix, and plays with the many ways in which these threads can be 'offset'.

In the opening measures, a canon of spiraling melodic strands twist around each other to produce the piece's first and simplest helix. Indeed, canons of all sorts, thought of as the instruments chasing after each other offset in time, are found throughout. A variety of other sometimes more abstract offsets - of pitch, texture, articulation, etc. - combine with the basic material to make up the piece's essential genome.

Beyond this, most of the development within Triple Helix comes not from motivic or harmonic manipulations but from placing familiar ideas, whose fundamental content remains unchanged, into radically new contexts. The opening frenetic helix later explodes into a relentless furioso outburst, boldly declarative fanfares become delicate to the point of timid, and a soaring melodic line is transformed into a wistful echo.