Shredding Glass
for orchestra
2023 The American Prize ERNST BACON MEMORIAL AWARD for the PERFORMANCE of AMERICAN MUSIC, community ensemble division – 3rd Place:
Ulysses James, conductor, Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, Alexandria VA
Score available through Subito Music Distribution.
Re-Release 2016: Dream Vapors – selected works for orchestra, Navona Records
Original Release 2008: Masterworks of the New Era, Volume 12 – ERMMedia, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Ian Winstin, Conductor
Program note: Shredding Glass began as an immediate cathartic response to the events and images of September 11, 2001. It is a reverential work of compassion and spiritual healing that was composed in the shadow of 9/11. To me this piece represents the essence of an emotional remembrance – how time and timelessness unfolded while coping with the realization, heartbreak and impact of this catastrophic event. I believe the music is ultimately about transcendence. –RW
Reviews of Shredding Glass
While many contemporary compositions responding to traumatic events do so by loudly conveying open anguish, Worthington takes a different approach. This is quiet music, though hardly gentle. Fragments of descending chromatic scales, played eerily with glissando effects or tremolo backing, convey the image of pieces of glass falling through the air. Strings play slowly oscillating harmonies or disappear entirely, leaving winds, very soft brass chords, and mallet percussion to carry the music.
The overall effect of Shredding Glass is one of awe and sorrow, well expressed by one critic as “an undercurrent of unresolved apprehension.” It conveys both unease and the composer’s desire for catharsis. It’s an interesting piece, and it stood strongly apart from the rest of the evening’s program. – David Bratman, San Francisco Classical Voice (SFCV)
…Worthington’s piece provides the listener instead with exquisite disintegration, mere glass filaments casting light in all directions, with an undercurrent of unresolved apprehension… The texture is transparent but luminous, reminiscent perhaps of the late works of Mahler. – Scott Locke, Journal of International Alliance for Women in Music
This music is in a world of its own. It has an original voice and is quite specific in what it has to say. …This is a very beautiful work, which weaves intricate patterns of sound in an hallucinogenic haze. It’s beautifully orchestrated, the material is well handled and it creates a dreamscape of exquisite allure. There are no heroes here, just we impotent onlookers. – Bob Briggs, MusicWeb-International
The incomprehensible expressed in sound. Powerful. – Dan Kepl, Performing Arts Review
