Flash!

By 2008, Sonatine de Giverny was being performed so frequently that I decided to write another piccolo piece as soon as an opportunity arose. Since Giverny is a study in French style, I knew the new piece must be in my own authentic American voice. That summer, Giverny was performed six times at the NFA convention as a mandatory competition piece, and I returned from the August 2008 convention all charged up to write something different for piccolo. In September, Kate Prestia-Schaub wrote to tell me about the International Piccolo Symposium's new composer competition. She proposed that if I write a new piccolo/piano piece, she would record a demo for me to submit to the competition, and she would submit applications to perform it at the 2009 IPS convention and NFA convention. What amazing timing! I set out to compose a flashy showpiece with a jazzy snap, lots of idiomatic scales and arpeggios, and a scary middle section, and by mid-October Flash! was complete. Kate followed suit and all 3 wishes came true - Flash! won first prize in the IPS composer competition, and she performed it both there and at NFA. In the meantime many other piccoloists have added the work to their repertoire, Cynthia Ellis wrote an article about it for Flute Talk magazine, and Walfrid Kujala commissioned a band accompaniment to premiere at NFA in 2010.