RUM DIARY
for string quartet
Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, cello
Completed: 2005
Duration: ca. 10 minutes
Premiere performance: Lily Francis, violin; Sylvia Kim, violin; Michael Chang, viola; Samuel Fletcher, cello; Field Concert Hall, Philadelphia, PA; November, 2005
Most recent performance: Elena Urioste, violin; Joel Link, violin; Jonathan Kim, viola; Abe Feder, cello; Lewis Chamber Music Festival, Lewis, DE; July, 2007
Program Note
Rum Diary is a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson: his volatility, velocity, humor, paranoia, excess, and refusal to look away. The title comes from Thompson’s first novel, but the piece is less a depiction of that book than a response to the larger force of his voice.
As a fellow Kentuckian, I have always felt a particular connection to Thompson’s work: its Southern sharpness, its appetite for contradiction, and its strange mixture of elegance and wreckage. His writing is brash, lucid, grotesque, funny, and often more truthful because of its instability. I wanted the music to carry some of that same energy.
Rum Diary pushes hard against the players and the material. It is unruly, fast-moving, and deliberately excessive, shaped by sudden turns, abrasive gestures, and a kind of manic forward pressure. The piece honors Thompson not by smoothing him into legend, but by embracing the danger, wit, and restlessness that made his work impossible to ignore.
– SC