Broken Pearls, for string orchestra, is a play on certain Baroque music of the early 18th century. The word baroque was originally derogatory; it meant “imperfect or misshapen pearl” (a rebuke of Baroque-period art by later, Classical-period critics). Broken Pearls thus incorporates several recognizably Baroque musical forms—the French overture, the fugue, etc.—but occasionally distorts them beyond recognition. The music is full of contrast, each section of the piece remaining true to its early 18th-century forebears: imperfect, perhaps, but dramatic, a little bit flamboyant, and at times unpredictable. Broken Pearls was written in 2011 for the Cleveland State University Chamber Orchestra, and received its premiere in 2012 with Victor Liva conducting. It later won the 2012 Young and Emerging Composers Competition of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and conductor Steven Smith, who featured the work on a concert in Cleveland, Ohio.
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