Kaleidoscope for Chamber Orchestra

This piece is drawn from an earlier multimedia work entitled “Kaleidoscope for soprano, violin, cello, piano, and two slide projectors.” About this latter work the composer wrote: “For a long time I have had the desire to work with ‘multimedia’, and conceived the idea of writing this specific composition after studying some children’s paintings. These paintings were done entirely through instinct with very little regard for the traditional methods, which stem from education and experience. They gave me certain impressions, which I felt could be transformed into musical sounds. The slides were done from the paintings or a portion of them and give no clear images. They create certain color moods. The words of colors and certain vague images were transformed into two letter series (twenty-four letters of the alphabet) which themselves stand for certain pitches. Two letters, j and z, represent a slide-effect upwards and downwards respectively. These two series pervade the entire work.”

This version for chamber orchestra was composed for 19 orchestral soloists and voice with the idea that the slide projectors should be replaced with other forms of art such as film or paintings to correspond to the vocal material.