My relationship with ELISION began years before I started working with them. As an undergraduate composition student, I discovered their CD catalogue in my conservatory’s music library, and quickly fell in love not just with the music they performed, but with the ensemble itself. Over those four college years, I had a weekly radio show, and if you lived in rural Ohio, you could tune into 91.5-FM and hear at least one ELISION recording during each show, usually in the dead of night. This relationship with the group changed on February 3, 2008 when I received an email from Daryl Buckley asking if I had the “interest or time” to write a piece for ELISION. I was 23 years old. I had both.
In the ten years that I’ve made music with the musicians of ELISION, I have found a lot to love, a lot to appreciate, and a lot to be humbled by. Their unparalleled and total commitment to the work, to crazy ideas, to experimentation, and to collaboration is infectious and inspiring. As a very young composer in 2008, they gave me the courage to compose with absolute conviction in my ideas. Now, ten years later, I regard this same inspiration from ELISION as a constant challenge to write for them with ever-greater degrees of intentionality and heart.
When writing for ELISION, you realize that you’re writing primarily for the people, not the instruments. The musicians of ELISION bring so much of themselves, so much passion, so much love to the music making process, to not embrace this would be a failure on the composer’s part. But most importantly for me, ELISION is not just an ensemble. It is a family. To have been invited into the ELISION family has been one of the most humbling experiences I’ve had as a musician. Everything I write for ELISION is a celebration of that connection.
– Timothy McCormack
Works by Tim McCormack
written for and premiered by ELISION and its musicians:
Disfixย (2008) for bass clarinet, piccolo trumpet, trombone
One flat thing reproduced (2010) for oboe, violin and percussion
Mirror Stratum (2011) for contrabass clarinet and violoncello
subsidence (2012-16) for electric lap-steel guitar (2 players)
KILN Iย (rev. 2017)ย for contrabass clarinet, euphonium and percussion (with Line Upon Line percussion trio)
KILN IIย (rev. 2017-18) for bass clarinet, contrabass and percussion
Forthcoming
KILN III for violoncello, tuba and percussion
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