String Trio - 'Monkey King'

This three-movement piece for violin, viola, and 'cello was partly inspired by the trickster-hero Sun Wukong (aka Monkey) from Journey to the West, the 16th-century Chinese novel/Buddhist parable attributed to Wu Cheng'en. Monkey has a child-like playfulness and sentimentality while also possessing absurd magical power: a combination that frequently gets him into a great deal of trouble with all the residents of heaven. His power is only usefully harnessed (and buddahood achieved) through his obligations to and interactions with his traveling companions on their mission to find and bring back the original source of Buddhist scriptures. This trio is my response to Monkey and his story.

(The section with strange, short notes in the second movement is meant to shift back and forth between pizzicato and bowed notes, but my software doesn't have that sound option; apologies.)

To those who wander

I wrote this short duet for two D tin whistles on vacation in Sicily while in the middle of writing my undergraduate thesis song cycle Search for Home. It also turned out to work well as an instrumental interlude in that song cycle.