Parallel Convergences was commissioned by Speculum Musicae, who gave the work its premiere in New York City in February, 1989. Aldo Moro’s oxymoronic phrase (used to characterize the progress of negotiations between Italy’s 13 Communist and Christian Democratic parties) seemed an apt title for piece which both creates continuities between apparently irreconcilable materials and principles, and dramatically contrasts different versions of the same thing. But while its materials are diverse and its stylistic range wide, it is neither a collage nor a postmodern pastiche. For each of its sections begins with a similar (or parallel) convergence on a single pitch, and develops gradually toward a crisis whose subsidence prepares the next convergence; and each such section is a microcosm of the whole. Thus the most surprising turns, twists, and juxtapositions are governed by a form that is (in another oxymoronic phrase) rigidly organic. —George Edwards