Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Woulda Coulda Shoulda was commissioned by the Chicago duo Garden Unit for their Frequency Series concert at Constellation on 15 September 2024, and is dedicated to them. It lasts about five minutes and is written for tenor saxophone and bass clarinet.

The title is the sound of regret in the mouth — three words that are not quite words, the conditional tense collapsed into a nursery chant. The two low reeds spend the piece finishing each other’s sentences and getting them wrong. Quarter-tones keep the pair from ever quite agreeing on a pitch; trills and tremolos are asked to be as fast and dense as possible; air tones, slap tongue, sharp audible inhalations and clustered high multiphonics turn the instruments into two people talking over each other about what might have happened. Every so often they land, for a bar, on a unison, and it is the saddest sound in the piece.

It is a small, fast, slightly comic study of a very uncomic feeling.