DOUBLE IKAT
by Paul Dresher
For violin, piano and percussion.

For several years, percussionist William Winant had been pestering me to write a piece for a trio of Bay Area musicians he was working with, but while interested in theory, I was preoccupied with my work in music theater and it wasn't until I saw the Trio perform Lou Harrison's Varied Trio at his 70th birthday concert that I was truly inspired to create a work for Willie, David Abel and Julie Steinberg.

The opportunity came in 1988 when I was commissioned by choreographer Brenda Way and her company ODC San Francisco to compose a score for their new work, Loose the Thread, whose imagery was based on material drawn from the lives of the people in the Bloomsbury Group.  I took the opportunity to compose a work for both the dance and the trio.  The version that resulted took its form largely from the dance and so in 1989, I took the material from that work and recomposed and edited it into an entirely different form, strictly as a concert work.

The title refers to a style of weaving common in South East Asia in which both the threads of the warp and weave are dyed to create the pattern or image.  For me, the title thus relates to the interrelationships of the three instruments and to the title of the choreographic work from which it sprang.  I wish to thank Brenda Way for creating much of the atmosphere which infuses the work; Lou Harrison for providing the inspiration to create my most blatantly lyrical work to date; and Willie, Julie, and David for working closely with me throughout the composition, rehearsal, revision of the piece.  The last section of Part Two of the work is an homage to North Indian sitarist Nikhil Banerjee, one of the finest musicians of this century, who died at far too early an age in 1986.