PROGRAM NOTE The invitation to compose a short work for the Cornell University Glee Club presented some special delights, of which the deep, beautiful sound of an all-male choir ranging from tenor down to low bass was the most immediate and palpable. I selected Shakespeare’s immortal Sonnet 73 in no small part because I found…
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PROGRAM NOTE My second string quartet, “Vistas,” is a work cast in a traditional four-movement formal mold, with the outer movements, presenting and later returning to the work’s principal musical materials, surrounding a slow movement and a scherzo-type third movement. While the four movements’ “proper” names — Maestoso con forza, Lento, Scherzo impetuoso, and Introduzione;…
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PROGRAM NOTE I Call to OrderII Promenades Composers and architects often remark on the kinship between the fields of music and architecture. On my first visit to the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2012, walking around and taking in this beautiful space that…
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PROGRAM NOTE At the beginning there is the blank page, the start of a compositional journey into the unknown. My first step as composer is to ask myself what are some of the “givens” to be confronted, often pre-determined by the artist or group for whom the work is intended, and what are some parameters—you…
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PROGRAM NOTE AD SCIENDAM . . . was commissioned in celebration of the University of Chicago’s 500th convocation, with generous funding by Don Michael Randel and Carol Randel. With the intent of providing a grand statement in praise of the pursuit of knowledge, my texts were selected from the first chapter of the book of…
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A PRAYER is a short work written in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the late Paul Fromm, the great Chicago-based patron of 20th century music, as part of a “bouquet of compositions” especially composed for the occasion and presented in a concert commemorating the event on January 22, 1982, by the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago, Ralph Shapey, music director.