Anthony R. Green – Zoeken (2022)

Nicholas Tolle, cimbalom Lilit Hartunian, ping pong balls Performed February 10th, 2026 Seully Hall, The Boston Conservatory Recorded by Jeff Means https://www.anthonyrgreen.com https://www.lamnth.com Zoeken (Dutch for “to search/look for”; pronounced : ZOO-kuh) began with me starting many drafts and hating everything that I composed until I started to envision myself on a path to create this piece. I imagined an embodiment of my creativity searching for the correct narrative, the correct pitches, the correct sonorities, the correct extended techniques, and the correct range of density and saturation for this piece. It was only then – in my discovering a narrative by imagining a protagonist searching for a narrative – that I settled upon the title zoeken and settled upon the flesh of the piece. Furthermore, incorporating the ping pong cluster was a rather hesitant decision on my part, but the effect is much more powerful and striking than one could ever have imagined. While I imagined a small narrative to help guide the creation of this piece, zoeken is not programmatic. It is a musical, melodic, gestural, and sonic exploration with (hopefully) a clear structure. – Anthony R. Green