Learn, Listen and Look
Instrumentation piano, string quartet, percussion
Duration ca. 9 minutes
Performance History
Read and recorded by fEARnoMUSIC on 20 March 2008.
Program Notes
As a kid, I was more of a Peanuts fan than a Calvin and Hobbes one. As I got older, and I began to appreciate more of the humor in the later cartoon, my loyalties gradually shifted. Of its many strengths, Calvin and Hobbes has a joie de vivre and spontaneity that appealed to me. Like many people, I was sad to see the strip come to an end, but a memorable, hopeful end it was.
Years later as I pondered what to write for the a reading session with the ensemble fEARnoMUSIC, I decided I wanted to write some with life and energy, and those ideals reminded me of the last line of Calvin and Hobbes: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ‘ol buddy . . . let’s Go Exploring!” The title of my piece, of course, comes from those last two words, though the music otherwise has no programmatic relationship to the cartoon.