Composer’s Note:

…Snip, Snip was commissioned for NOVAs 40th season by Chamber Music America, who generously supported the project with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is scored for clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), horn, piano, prepared piano, and string quartet.

I descend from a long line of tailors, some of them every-day artisans, some real artists. I obviously hold the profession in high esteem, and pleasurably regularly recall the sensation of going to my uncles shop in 1960s New Orleans with its endlessly long tables and masses of cloth bolts, within the widest, completely natural, multi-cultural experience one might experience.

…Snip, Snip refers to my working out, tailoring the material that is meant to unfold as a six-section, 16-minute narrative, which sometimes features the piano and sometimes has it do handwork in conjunction with the rest of the ensemble.