$20
This version is for piano and electronics. This listing is for the score. For the electronics (Max patch with the tape and click track), email Saad at saad@saadnhaddad.com for the latest version.
Shifting Sands constantly wavers unpredictably between the distinctive strands of Western and Arabic music, seeking to fuse the evocative, other-worldly sound of the maqam (‘scale’ in Arabic) within a Western scheme and tonality. The structure of the work is influenced by tarab, the Arabic word for a continuous state of musical ecstasy. One of the main ideas of the piece involves an undying, repetitive pulse from the piano that sets up an uninterrupted framework for the passage of roving scalar runs that dance all over the piano. In an abstract sense, that music is akin to the monolithic presence of the vast Arabian deserts as a backdrop for the hundreds of thousands of nomads that have traversed their ancient sands.