Into Focus is a meditation on the process of bringing an image into focus. The idea of the piece started originally with a vamp of quintuplets that felt stable but somewhat uncomfortable. I really liked the warmth of the major 7 harmony and how it contrasted with the quintuplet motor, creating a very blurry and warm texture. As I developed this idea, I felt like it needed to go somewhere rather than remain static for the entire piece, and that’s where the inspiration for the piece really came. I thought of the way that a camera focuses on an image, first becoming more unclear before bringing everything into clarity.

The piece ended up in three through composed sections: an initial blurry state, one that becomes less focused, and then a final section of clarity. These are each marked by a metric modulation, marked by a tempo change that doesn’t actually change the speed of the subdivision, but rather the grouping. The first section presents the initial blurry section, before having the original section become more unclear as the quintuplets become the 16th notes in a 4/4 minimal section. This goes on to explore a number of different styles and rhythmic feels as a sort of development before transitioning back into the opening material and back into the quintuplet groupings. This is short-lived though, before snapping into a final sextuplet section that brings the original material into an intense, bright focus to the end of the piece.

This work is commissioned by and dedicated to my good friend and colleague Dawson Coleman, who’s collaboration has been very gratifying over the course of this work and several others during my time as FSU.