Folio, C :: Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano

Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano

Folio, C

Cynthia Folio presents her Trio for flute, cello, and piano.

Most of my teaching is on the topics of traditional music theory of the common practice period, or the other extreme avant-garde works of the 20th- century. My music has traces of both extremes, but falls mostly in the middle. But some of my research interests relate to my composition more directly.

One clear example of this cross-influence appears in my Trio for flute, cello, and piano. I had just published an article on polyrhythm in jazz and had studied the music of Ghana in preparation for this. I also transcribed and discussed some avant-garde jazz solos by Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman, and Eric Dolphy. The Trio contains jazz influences, but more importantly, it features rhythm in a unique way in each movement. The first movement uses a lot of jazz rhythms, polyrhythms, and syncopation. The second movement uses the technique of isorhythm, where 10 chords are repeated over and over, but with a repeating rhythm of a different length (similar to the first movement of Messaien s Quartet for the End of Time). The last movement also features polyrhythms, but it uses one specific rhythm from Ghana the gonkogui bell pattern: 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 (representing eighth-note groupings within a 12/8 meter) as the main theme.

- Cynthia Folio; appearing in Yeji Kim: Hybridity in Flute Music, 2012