Powerhouse (rhumba): perpetuum mobile for orchestra (1993)

Unchained Melody, Powerhouse and Elevator Music form a trilogy sorts, in an overtly popular idiom of great appeal. The title of Unchained Melody is taken “from an old, and at the time relatively obscure, 1950s pop song”, actually composed by none other than Alex North. This boisterous song-and-dance movement sometimes brought to mind another composer whom I much admire:. the late Elmer Bernstein. Powerhouse is a brilliant Scherzo in much the same vein. Elevator Music, a sort of urban Toccata that often made me think of Leonard Bernstein (that of, say, West Side Story) and other American composers such as John Adams or Michael Daugherty. This work is – so the composer tells us – based on a twelve-tone row, “which introduces a possibility [I] wish Schoenberg had thought of – one day playing tennis with Gershwin, perhaps”. In fact, the three parts of the trilogy almost sound as variations on the same basic material.