Tate wrote “Chokfi’” for a youth orchestra the slippery rhythms and some of the more dissonant harmonies are surprising for such a work. The overall structure of the work is a type of free variations, with the hymn repeatedly popping up in different textures.
Then the violins outline a melody that Tate describes as a “popular tribal church hymn.” Double basses, cellos and violas jump in, at first playing open strings but soon pulsing along in gruff harmonies. It opens with stark percussion playing a pulse in unpredictably shifting meters. Tate describes his piece as a “Sarcasm for String Orchestra and Percussion,” and its several sections (played continuously) illustrate the “complicated and diabolical personality of this rabbit person.”
Chokfi’ is a rabbit trickster character in Chickasaw legend.
