Writers’ Room
for Chamber Orchestra
Instrumentation
1(picc).1.2(bcl).1 1.1.1(btn).0 pno 2perc(dr kit) 2vln.vla.vcl.cb
Program Note
Writers’ Room aims to evoke the atmosphere of a room full of talented, driven, and sometimes stubborn television writers who are trying to come up with some good material for their next show, with a very quickly approaching deadline.
The piece, depicting this chaos, is constantly brainstorming, workshopping, revising, squabbling, and panicking. Much like some of the more dysfunctional, wild, and certainly entertaining writers’ rooms on television from the past, the music is constantly introducing new ideas, exhausting them to their logical breaking points, and finally tossing them aside in favor of newer, sexier ideas – sometimes shockingly and abruptly.
Throughout the piece, there are moments of exciting momentum, as if one particular idea works well enough to run with, moments of absurdity, as if one of the crazier writers decided to shout out the first idea that came to their head (known as a ‘wildie’), and there are also, as expected, many moments of bitter argument and chaos, where nobody can agree on what the piece is actually about. Somehow, though, out of all this mess of ideas, the writers paste together something resembling a script, ready for air.
Writers’ Room was written for Alarm Will Sound.
00.-Writers-Room-Full-Score-TransposedPremiere
July 2016
Commissioned by
Commissioned by Alarm Will Sound