Salt Peanuts

For Flute, Clarinet (bcl), Violin, Piano

Duration: 5 min

This work started while I was studying jazz theory and arranging with Dr. Jack Cooper at the University of Memphis. The Argento Chamber Ensemble was set to do a residency, and I was one of the students selected to write a short piece for them. Salt Peanuts, modeled after a motto taken from jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s original work by the same name, has a number of jazz influenced rhythms and gestures throughout, particularly quotes from charts written by Gillespie and Thad Jones.

Salt Peanuts was a winner of the 2010 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.