Program note:
This work is based on a puzzle from game theory and probability as described by Simon Singh in the book Fermat’s Last Theorem. A truel is a duel involving three people. The rules are that each has a turn at shooting at one opponent and the truel continues until only one participant is left alive. In one particular truel there are three people, Mr. Black, Mr. Gray and Mr. White. Mr. Black hits his target one time in three. Mr. Gray hits the target two times in every three and Mr. White never misses. To make it fairer Mr. Black shoots first, then Mr. Gray, followed by Mr. White, and so on, until only one man remains alive. The question is what should Mr. Black do?
Black’s best option is a non-violent one: to shoot into the air. If he shoots at Gray and kills him then he is a dead man. If he shoots at White and kills him then he only has a 1/3 chance of survival. By shooting into the air he ensures that Gray and White shoot it out and then he has the first shot against the survivor. In other words, by initially killing one of his opponents he would only make his chances worse because then the remaining opponent would shoot at him instead of the third man. Then the worst shot has the best chances because he is the least dangerous.
Truel was commissioned for the Bakken Piano Trio by the Jerome Foundation and Headwaters Music with funding from Meet the Composer. This is the world premiere of a new version for clarinet trio.
About the composer:
Arlene Elizabeth Sierra is an American composer who divides her time between the U.S. and Britain. Recent commissions demonstrate her dual-national profile, from organizations including the Tanglewood Music Festival (the Paul Jacobs Award Commission), the Performing Right Society Foundation, the Albany Symphony, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (a commission for its 25th birthday celebration). Her concert works are regularly commissioned by performers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany and her music for dance has been performed at Jacobs Pillow and Tanglewood, but most frequently in her home city of New York.
Born in Miami in 1970, Arlene Sierra began her musical studies at the piano at the age of five. She had her first composition lessons at Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where she earned dual B.Mus. and B.A. degrees in Electronic Music and East Asian Studies. Her education continued at the Yale School of Music where she received an M. Mus. in Composition, and at the University of Michigan, where she was a Merit Fellow and received a Doctorate in Composition. In America her teachers included Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick and William Albright. As a participant in composition seminars at the Dartington Festival and the Britten-Pears School in the U.K., she studied with Judith Weir, Colin Matthews, Oliver Knussen and Magnus Lindberg.
Described in the London Times as “outstanding and vivid”, Arlene Sierra’s chamber, vocal and orchestral works have been performed by Aeolian Singers, the American Composers Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Psappha, the Albany Symphony, the Schubert Ensemble of London, and the Tokyo Philharmonic; performances at festivals have included Aldeburgh, Bowdoin, Fontainebleau, Tanglewood, Dartington, and Aspen.
She has received awards and grants from ASCAP, the American Music Center, the Society for Promotion of New Music, and Meet the Composer, as well as fellowships from the Aspen Music Festival, the MacDowell Colony and the Tanglewood Music Center. The only woman to win the Toru Takemitsu Prize for Orchestral Composition, the largest and most prestigious international competition for young composers, Dr. Sierra is currently a Composition Tutor and Composer in Residence at Cambridge University.
