Attitudes...Assumptions Shattered (2004) for drum set solo

Attitudes…Assumptions Shattered explores the idea of a shattered mirror.  From a mirror, I imagine a skewed reflection and its ability to reveal one's attitude towards the world and their unexamined-assumptions, which inform those attitudes. Through the juxtaposition, interpolation, and concatenation of grooves, drum fills, and palindromic rhythmic events, I attempt to embed this shattered, mirror-image metaphor into the piece.  
 
In three short movements, set apart by two improvisational interludes, these musical materials are structured temporally by three cycles of a polyrhythm that yields a seemingly random, yet highly ordered palindromic series of durations. These durations, or time segments, are articulated intuitively on metal surfaces and through fills, which are arranged in mirrored phrases at certain moments throughout the cycles. Strings of similar time segments are punctuated on the temple blocks to set up or echo an approaching or receding groove, respectively. Throughout the cycles, the performer is also encouraged occasionally to create their own mirror-image fills. Similarly, the improvisationl interludes serve as grounds for more intuitive explorations of the time segments and more personal interpretations of the metaphor.