In 1949, a group of young people embarked on their second journey from the East to the West Coast of the USA, as narrated by Jack Kerouac in the iconic “On the Road,” a novel that defined the Beat Generation. In 2025, the musicians of Galan Trio, who have been touring extensively in the USA in recent years, bring with them works from their repertoire by composers who live along—or near—Kerouac’s travel route. How do his footsteps sound today?

Program

• Todd Groves (stop: New York City, NY): “Dance Music for a Frenetic Mind” for piano trio (2022)

“‘Dance Music for a Frenetic Mind’ started as dance music, beginning with three types of dances: foxtrot, waltz, and some type of folk dance with a vaguely Eastern European groove. When I started to write, my ear and mind started wandering in different directions. I tried to resist and stick more closely to the original three dances, but, ultimately, I let the music wander. While the original three dances are still in the piece to some degree, the piece is more about dancing between different motifs, moods, and thoughts. The result sounded somewhat frantic to me, but I did not want to rein that in, so I continued writing with the idea of the music spiraling into something stranger and more intense as it progresses. The final piece struck me as a kind of dance music for a (or my) frenetic mind.”

• Sophia Serghi (b. 1972) (stop: Williamsburg, VA): “Towards the Flame” for piano trio (2010)

The music refers to the circular dance of a moth around a flame. It consists of twenty-one short sections in 7/8, which slowly build from a simple pattern to a frenetic intensity and texture, and back again to simplicity. “Towards the Flame” suggests the cyclical reincarnation of the soul (moth) invited to dance around a burning flame (life and love). As is well known, the moth inevitably engages in a wild dance around the attractive flame only to be burned and emerge into spirit. In a short time, we can expect a new moth to appear or reappear (reincarnation) and perform a similar dance, thus maintaining the perpetual and transcendent dance of the same spirit!

The work was first performed by Trio D’Amici at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., in May 2009.

• Yiorgos Vassilandonakis (b. 1969) (stop: Charleston, SC): “Cyanic Outbursts” for piano trio (2021)

“Cyanic Outbursts” is a brief, virtuoso, jolting mélange of constant and unpredictable texture and energy shifts. It ranges from peaceful stillness to dizzying repeating swirls to frantic dance episodes and everything in between, exploring the piano trio’s rich timbral tapestry. This work, commissioned by and dedicated to Galan Trio, takes abstract motivic and rhythmic materials from Greek island folk music and places them into a contemporary harmonic and gestural context that emphasizes the ensemble’s interplay and musicianship.

• David Carter (stop: Los Angeles, CA): “Sifting Chaparral” for piano trio (2024)

“I was inspired to compose ‘Sifting Chaparral’ by the dense shrubland (chaparral), which is common in Southern California, where I live. There is also an equivalent vegetation in Greece, where the Galan Trio is based. Both Southern California and much of Greece have a dry, mild climate where these plants can thrive in coastal areas. The piece moves through a complex tangle of loops and polyrhythms, occasionally revealing melodic lines and sometimes glittering pizzicato patterns.”

• Cindy Cox (b. 1961) (stop: San Francisco, CA): “La mar amarga” for piano trio (2007)

“You may recognize the wonderful opening of Frederico García Lorca’s famous ‘Romance sonámbulo’ (‘Sleepwalking Romance’), ‘Verde que te quiero verde’ (‘Green I love you green’). The title of ‘La mar amarga’ (‘The Bitter Sea’) comes from a later section of this poem; I loved the sound of the elided repetition of ‘(l)a mar’ and found in it a strong relationship to the kind of covered repetitions in my own piece.

But you probably don’t know of an oddball work called ‘Sensitive Chaos’ (published by the Rudolf Steiner Press) by Theodor Schwenk. He wrote this study in the 1960s and subtitled it ‘The creation of flowing forms in water and air.’ His mix of the poetic and the scientific, with chapter headings such as ‘Archetypal movements of water’ and ‘The formation of vortices’ was particularly inspiring as metaphors for my approach to musical shape and direction. Like the gorgeous pictures of water and wind patterns at the end of the book, my music strives to be in a simultaneously fluid yet architecturally static form.”

Galan Trio: Petros Bouras (piano), Babis Karasavvidis (violin), Marina Kolovou (cello)

Curator: Lorenda Ramou

The concert features excerpts from the book “On the Road” narrated by Jack Kerouac.