Millennium Bridges

for flexible instrumentation and singing audience

premiered September 25, 2001

a cast of hundreds


Millennium Bridges is a piece for eleven instrumental parts and singing audience. Written in celebration of the reopening of Bridges Hall of Music after a year of renovations, the work was one of the first few pieces to be publicly performed in the hall in the new millennium, at least by some calendaric interpretations.

In this celebratory concert it seemed appropriate (or at least fun) to have everyone in the room participate in the piece; therefore faculty, students, and audience all had roles to play. The eleven different instrumental parts and the two choral parts for the audience were directed by our three faculty conductors. Written in a quasi-minimalist style, the piece is based on the first four and last four notes of the alma mater, "Hail, Pomona, Hail."

One of the motivations in renovating Bridges was to provide an ideal acoustical home for a new organ made by C. B. Fisk. Although the organ was installed last summer, the final voicing of its 3500 pipes would not be completed until the next year. For Millenium Bridges' premiere the builders gave organist William Peterson permission to use three notes These servde as cues for our audience singers and provided a tantalizing preview of the organ’s formal debut the following fall.

score excerpt

back to

List of Works