Divertissement actually started out as an assignment for Frank Ticheli's composition class at the University of Southern California. At the time, we were studying different ways to create and sustain chromaticism within a tonal context. For the assignment, I sketched out a short, bitonal melody/accompaniment for piano. Though I didn't think much of the sketch at the time, for some reason I kept coming back to it when trying to formulate ideas for this piece. In the end, this simple assignment for class became the base material for the first movement of this work and also the motivic glue that holds the entire work together. The simple gestures found in the main theme of the first movement weave their way, in various guises, through every one of the other three movements.

     The first movement, Interstellar Rituals, is meant to conjure up images of the rituals of some unknown, foreign culture. Though the movement's title suggests some sort of extraterrestrial context, I was mostly just thinking about conveying a harmonic and rhythmic world that drew from the music of some hypothetical, undiscovered civilization.

     The second movement, Cathedral, started with a vision I had one day of two people, in an empty and dark cathedral, expressing the innermost longings of their souls through freeform dance movements. Thus, at various points in the movement one will hear the tolling bells of the belfry, the massive organ roaring to life, and the innocent, private expressions of two people gathered in such a sacred space. The movement ends with a quote from the Guillaume Machaut Messe de Notre Dame (Mass of our Lady) written in 1365. When this music appears, it is as if a liturgical service has started, and the listener, not wanting to interrupt, is led out of the cathedral and directly into the third movement.

     The third movement, Echo Lake, is meant to musically recreate an idyllic place from my childhood. Nestled among the Rocky Mountains of Idaho Springs, CO, Echo Lake was a place my family would visit every summer when I was a child. The pastoral nature of the opening phrases depicts the innocent and perfect stillness of the lake's water I remember from those many, blissful summer trips. Soon, though, a melody appears that "pollutes" the established, "clean" harmonic world. The rest of the movement becomes an attempt to musically reconcile the perfect image I still have in my head of this untouchable, natural setting and the reality of the years of manmade pollution that have undoubtably had a negative impact on Echo Lake since I last was there 10 years ago.

     The last movement, Five on the Floor, is a pun on the popular dance genre, Four on the Floor. Four on the Floor music is characterized by hard, driving beats in 4/4 time that instantly make people want to get up and dance. The main theme, set in groups of five instead of four, is constantly fooled by added beats and irregular meters. It's as if the piece is trying to lay down a clean dance beat pattern but keeps getting too exited for its own good. Ultimately, the pulsing beat wins out and a frantic dance to the finish ensues.