The original idea for A Great Many came from videos of starlings moving together in a murmuration.  I am interested in large groups of organisms and the way they operate with each other in highly choreographed ways.  A Great Many is a dense piece with layers of sound stacked on top of one another.  In concert, the vibrations from the percussion and clarinet should feel like the air sweeping by.  Music like this gives listeners a chance to feel the vibrations of the sound and to live with them as part of their lives for the duration of the performance. At the same time that the piece is the physical feeling a great many sounds together, it is also a series of states that together (I have learned) constitute something like a cycle of agitation and introspection.  A Great Many is a collaborative performance project between Mantra Percussion and Christa Van Alstine and really could not exist without them.