Randall Krieger — The Decaying Embers of a Didactic Star (PREMIERE)

Composed by my friend, multi-instrumentalist and composer Randall Krieger, this “micro-tuned“ guitar piece is very exciting for me, given that this is both a performance premiere, and the first work I’ve commissioned! In “The Decaying Embers of a Didactic Star,“ Krieger uses a very unusual and unconventional tuning for the guitar that allows for sonorities and harmonies not typically accessible on the instrument. Guitar is tuned primarily on the basis of 12-tone equal temperament (or 12-TET for short), a tuning system where there are 12 different musical pitches or notes to each octave — this tuning system has become the most universal since the 18th century, in classical and Western music in general. In this piece, the guitar is tuned to pitches both from 12-TET as well as pitches outside of this system — pitches that might be considered as existing “in-between” the 12 tones of equal temperament, allowing for a larger variety of very close intervallic relationships between