Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff of HOCKET
HOCKET Explores #what2020soundslike Assistant Teaching Professor of Music Composition Sarah Gibson commissions works for 2020 with HOCKET In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Assistant Teaching Professor of Music Composition Sarah Gibson announced a new project, #what2020soundslike, with her Los Angeles-based new music piano duo, HOCKET. Gibson and her duo partner, fellow pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff, commissioned 50 composers to write miniatures for piano duo as a response to the challenges of the year 2020. “We’ve all been itching to create music and to figure out a way to share art,” said Gibson. “Once we made the decision to start rehearsing together again, HOCKET was interested in how 50 composers would respond in the moment with miniatures for our duo. For the prompt, we asked composers to respond musically to what has happened (and what is currently happening) so far in 2020 — they could respond in any way they felt they wanted to. We wanted this project to be a platform for our friends, colleagues, and collaborators to come together and express themselves in a time when many of us are looking for a sense of community and artistic expression.” “The piece length parameters were to write miniatures that are either 15, 30, or 45 seconds in length. The purpose of this choice in length was so that the pieces could be composed, rehearsed, and recorded quickly and give as much of a sense of “real-time” musical reaction to the moment as 16 | UC Santa Barbara Department of Music | Fall 2020 Newsletter
