PROGRAM NOTE My Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is a work of some 30 minutes cast in three movements. Each movement explores certain facets of the violin’s complex personality, or “soul.” The classically proportioned first movement, taken as a whole, is rather mercurial in character, ranging the gamut from the lyrical and deeply expressive to…
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PROGRAM NOTE FOR AN ACTOR: MONOLOGUE FOR CLARINET owes its inspiration in large part to the intensely personal ethos with which the clarinet is associated in my mind. To me, the instrument in its contemporary usage suggests an incredible gamut of gestures, dynamics and emotions. Accordingly, in MONOLOGUE, the player assumes the role of a…
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[This program note was written for the work’s premiere performance in 1987.] CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA is the latest in an ongoing series of compositions began in the mid 1970’s in which an exploration, at least on one level, of the relationship between a given work’s formal/dramatic essence and its chosen instrumentation is a significant compositional…
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Commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundationfor Xiaohui Yang World Premiere: January 21, 2020Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie HallNew York CityXiaohui Yang, pianist Duration: c. 11’ Ballade, a work of approximately 11 minutes, is a one-movement work, internally divided into three main parts that are played without significant break. A pianist learning the work will…
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PROGRAM NOTES SUPPLICATIONS is a work I consider to be the seed of a large-scale composition I envision tackling at some future point which would posit the eternal human quest for faith with the challenges of life’s often inexplicably cruel realities. Such a work would draw on multiple sources for its texts, juxtaposing quotes from…
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