Fairchild Botany

for solo bass clarinet

Written for and premiered by Zach Manzi on Saturday, April 6th, at Gusman Hall in Coral Gables, Florida. 

Notes:

Fairchild Botany is a piece inspired by and dedicated to the stunning natural beauty of the Fairchild Botanical Gardens in Coral Gables. The 83-acre property contains an enormous variety of rare tropical plant life from around the globe, and is somewhat of a quiet haven from the outside urban sprawl of Miami. This garden, along with the many other sites of incredible natural beauty in South Florida, are in a fragile state of being in the face of the impending issues posed by climate change. Miami is a special place to me, and thus I sought out to capture and preserve this delicate state in a piece of music. The work uses a variety of extended techniques on the bass clarinet to achieve an abstract representation of this fragile beauty. The techniques themselves are unpredictable in nature, and force the performer to work hard to preserve the quiet, pastoral identity of the music.