2016

I've often come back to the poetry of T.S. Eliot over the years, especially his mystical ruminations on time in The Four Quartets, pondering evocative phrases such as “the music from a farther room,” or “you are the music while the music lasts.” Without drawing conscious connections, I sometimes recognize phenomena in his poetry which I strive to create in my own works. When I began composing the sound textures of The Yellow Fog, some lines from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” popped into my head: "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes / The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes."

The Yellow Fog was composed for Either/Or Ensemble, and premiered at
Tenri Cultural Institute 27 March 2011.

​

"'Yellow Fog", by Erik Griswold, was a challenging, episodic piece that drifted in and out of tonality-- getting denser and more tension-filled as it progressed. Cello and clarinet wove intricate lines that orbited, echoed, and ultimately opposed each other. Challenging--but satisfying in a hard to define way." - Robert Bush, San Diego Reader, 15 June 2012