21 short etude-like movements, total length ca. 27 minutes, written in 2013.
I had been writing evocative music for a while, and I wanted to get back to the more rigorous music I wrote as a student. And so, Sketchbooks was a deliberate exercise in developing small musical ideas, and letting purely musical considerations guide how the piece unfolds. I came up with about 30 short ideas, chose 21 of those to work with, and dove in. It was a really satisfying piece to write, and I think it changed me as a composer, hopefully for the better…
“Many of the sketches feature Karmon’s distinctive lyricism, while others may be dissonant and demented. Karmon’s writing maintains a hard to find balance between idiomatic guitar writing and composition that is independent of the guitar.”—John Oeth
Michael Karmon 