CONCERTOs
DURATION: 19 minutes
Winner of Five International Recording Awards
Winner in the American Prize for Orchestral Music
ae71—Tempest-Flute Concerto (2014)
1.2/pic, 1.Eh, 1.Bscl, 1.Cbn; 2, 1, 2, 1; Timp+2; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6) SOLO FLUTE
The title of this work refers to rough wind. When I was approached about a new flute work the idea of a wind player and a virtuosic wind player set my imagination to types of crazy, unrestrained wind. This led me to look into the natural occurrences of wild, unpredictable wind patterns around the world. This led in turn to the titles of the three movements: Ostro the traditional name of the southerly wind in the Mediterranean sea; Mistral, a cold northerly from central France and the Alps to Mediterranean–this movement I have also allied to the notion of a type of funeral march, hence the title Mistral … Funerailles with the cold wind perhaps summoning the notion of death and impermanence.
Finally, the last frantic and virtuosic movement is titled Etesian which references a strong, dry north wind of the Aegean Sea which is most of the time a good steady sailing wind. The well-contained and metrical virtuosity of this movement seems to align with this welcome and sustaining wind that is good for travel.
In artistically interpreting all of these types of global wind patterns I have tried to invest a dramatic and virtuosic element to the corresponding wind music. I was asked for a piece without restrictions and so a concerto seemed the obvious vehicle. The fact that a virtuoso such as Gareth Davies premiered the work was such an honor and I am thankful for his awesome technical power and completely beautiful musicianship.
DURATION: 46 minutes
ae70—Black City-Cello Concerto No. 2 (2015)
CONCERTINO: Cimbalom, Prepared Piano, Orchestral Harp, Obbligato Soprano (offstage)
ORCHESTRA: 1/pic.2/pic, 2, 2, 1.2/Cbn; 4, 2, 3, 1; Timp+3; ST (14,12,10,8,6) SOLO CELLO
My second cello concerto Black City sits in contrast in many ways to my first cello concerto Soar. My first concerto is in one long movement with rather conventional scoring and is about striving and our innate urge to overcome and grow.
My second concerto, in contrast, is first of all on a much larger scale or ‘bigger canvas’ than the first concerto being cast in five rather long movements, each with an internal intensity that links them and creates the narrative thread of the music. Much of this music is about degradation, erosion and loss. As with most of my music I mean these somewhat geological ideas as metaphors for internal psycho-emotional change that takes place within us. As we grow and change it is not always about gain and stability but can also be about loss, diminishment and structural change. The metaphor of a rich internal city slowly eroding gave rise to the title of the work. I was extremely fortunate to come across the amazing poetry of the young American poet Dave Lucas, whose take on the decaying Midwestern cities of the United States (where I was both born and now live) had in them many internal and external metaphors that seemed so appropriate to my work.
Each movement has an inscription taken from Mr. Lucas’s poems from the volume Weather, while each also has a different structure and character despite the narrative thread that links them.
Movement 1—Letter to a Friend—(Expressive)
Let us go singing, friend, toward the distance
Where all is ruins. Do the broken not make music?
Sing ruin then. Sing ruin that it be sweet.
Movement 2—River on Fire—(Scherzo)
Stranger, the way of the world is crooked
And anything can burn.
Movement 3—It Will Be Rain Tonight—(Passacaglia)
I am no longer counting
phases of the insomniac moon.
I make no promises in the dark.
I have left that sad city blinking behind.
Movement 4—You Asked What the Heart Can Carry—(Cadenza)
I said stones. You asked how long.
I said until the sand they come to.
Movement 5—Midst of a Burning Fiery Furnace—(Finale)
I have heard of that alchemy of steel—
I am familiar with the dying arts. Let them burn
the dark night livid, my poor republic
of ingot and slag. I am seething
in my depths, I too have come to forge.
My thanks to conductor Kimcherie Lloyd for her commitment to premiering this work and to brilliant cellist Paul York for premiering it (and for premiering or recording and playing all of my other cello music!). This work is dedicated to Paul and his tremendous artistry and technical craft. He is a composer’s dream and I feel so lucky to have him as a champion of my music.
DURATION: 24 minutes
ae66—A Patchen Cycle (2012)
1.2.pic, 1.2.Eh, 1.2.Bscl, 1.2.Cbn; 4, 3, 3, 1; Timp+2; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6) BARITONE SOLO
A Patchen Cycle was written as a birthday present for my dear wife Josephine. The quality of these beautiful texts, with their flinty richness, urbanity, gravity and seriousness paint, for me, a portrait of what real love is: passionate, devoted, fiercely loyal, ravishingly sensual, earthy yet deeply spiritual also. The texts were very challenging for me to set and at various points caused immense difficulty. My only hope is that these points of stress in the making do not show in the telling.
The cycle – with all of its moods, emotions, thoughts and feelings – is dedicated with love to my beautiful wife and unrelentingly supportive life companion, Josephine.
DURATION: 10 minutes
ae57—Drift (2011)
ST (6,5,4,4,2); SOLO OBOE
drift was written as a type of experiment with shape and form. I wanted to see if I could better ‘suspend’ time and, in doing so, create a strange unfettered motion that once moves and seems to stay still.
I remembered very vividly my summers, those hot summers, where, as a boy I would lie on the cool grass under the shade of a lumbering Sycamore tree and watch the huge white, brilliantly white clouds move very so slowly across the sea blue sky. As they moved, they not only changed position, but also ever so slowly their shape.
This became a very beautiful activity for me as I lay alone with my thoughts staring at this wondrous expanse of summer loveliness.
As I began work on this piece the whole notion of meter and rhythm became quite challenging as did the idea of harmonic rhythm. All of these things so bear on the shape and form of music that, when they are suspended, one can seem to almost lose control of the flow.
The trick for me was to slow into this new time world where drama is not a player and things slowly morph and unfold. I would hope too that the audience can similarly fall into this world where time almost stands still and all that remains is the beautiful sounds of stillness hanging in the air.
My deep thanks to Awadagin Pratt, conductor of WIRED string ensemble for premiering the piece and hearty thanks also to the artistry of Dwight Parry and his numerous and subtle suggestions that helped somuch to refine the solo line.
Duration: 31 minutes
ae47—Glow-Double Concerto for Clarinet & Violin (2008)
1.2/pic, 2, 2, 2; 4, 2, 2, 1; Timp+2; Hp; ST (14,12,10,8,6); CLARINET SOLO; VIOLIN SOLO
Glow was written in response to a request from the Verdehr Trio founding members, Walter and Elsa Verdehr, for a new double concerto for violin and clarinet.
As I began to think through the possibilities for the new work, many things ran through my mind’s ear, but the one thing I could not escape was a sense of quietly pulsating – or glowing – chords that would characterize the opening movement. Coupled with these slowly pulsing chords is a yearning accompaniment figuration underpinning them and together these materials form the substantive basis for the entire work.
Glow was the last work of mine to be performed in Tasmania under the auspices of the Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute that I founded. The piece is dedicated with deep affection to Elsa and Walter Verdehr who have been so supportive of my work.
DURATION: 10 minutes
ae46—…mist, memory, shadow… (2007)
ST (7,6,5,4,2); SOLO VIOLIN
...mist, memory, shadow... is a short elegiac work commemorating a triumvirate of things I consider iconically related to Tasmanian musical heritage.
First of all, mist stands centrally in the profound effect the environment exerts upon all Tasmanian musicians – its quiet, unrelenting and strong presence that seems to yield to neither time nor the modern world. Environment seems to exert an influence on all Tasmanian artists to draw them deeper into the timeless mysteries of place and our presence in that place.
Memory is linked with this, since the still environment of Tasmania's natural wilderness seems to catalyze a reflection on the present and how this is contextualized within the past, and by implication also the future.
Shadow refers to both the incredible natural light of Tasmania but also the long 'shadow' cast by Jan Sedivka and the TSO on this very special place and the musical art that is borne and takes place here.
...mist, memory, shadow... is thus a kind of still elegy that gently reflects on place and people with a central section that is more assertive and keyed to the passions so necessary to establish art and music in this fragile, timeless island.
The work is dedicated to my good friend MA Jun-Yi and the tremendous TSO strings in honor of the 90th birthday of another good friend, master musician Jan Sedivka.
DURATION: 18 minutes
ae44—In Questi Giorni (2005)
2, 2, 1, 2; 2, 1, 0, 0; Timp+1; ST (14,12,10,8,6); MEZZO SOPRANO SOLO
Terra mia ti amo e ti benedico.
Il mondo è tanto bello.
Io muoio ma vidico: la vita è bella non rimpiango,
Ma l’amo amante sempre
Ma l’amo e l’ho amate sempre.
Percìo in questi giorni mi avete udito cantare ero felice della poca vita
Che avero da vivere ed ora sono lieto della morte.
DURATION: 15 minutes
ae41—Soar-Cello Concerto No.1 (2004)
View Score
1.2/pic, 2, 2, 2; 2, 1, 1, 1; Timp+2; Hp; ST(14,12,10,8,6) CELLO SOLO
soar was written in response to a long-held desire to write a work that would capitalize on cellist Christian Wojtowicz’s cello sound, style and technique. Most of all I sought to write for his ability to translucently and constantly evolve new and unique colorations and inflections of expressive, carefully molded musical line.
With this as a background, I set out to write a cello and piano work that I could not help thinking of as a short score for a cello concerto. This led to thinking of the work as a deeply hybridized, even consciously contradictory amalgam of sources: chamber music for cello and piano, yet big and dramatic music suited to a concerto; a chromatic, ‘roving’ harmonic structure that is yet rooted in firm centers around E; a thorny, expressive language that is florid and exhibitionistic yet one that is also lyrical, passionate and intimately, inwardly emotional.
From this powerful set of contradictory impulses the work took shape. Over the initial few measures the piano unfolds a bass line that captures the harmonic ‘contradictions’ of the work: a firm centre of E, extended and elaborated through progression to the minor third above via progressive chromatic unfolding. Insistent accented sixths articulate implicit rhythms that are overtly taken up as the work unfolds. The cello enters boldly and dramatically: unfolding triplet sixteenths that form an important basis for the fast sections of the work. These three fast sections are separated by two slow, expressive and exposed sections of related thematic character thus forming the loosely knit five-part ‘rondo’ type structure of the work.
The style of argument used in elaborating materials in soar is very distinctly similar to that of all of my recent works: a reliance on traditional motivic and thematic development of ideas, balanced with an approach to repetition of ideas that allows the musician and audience to re-engage with the traditionally formative elements of music.
But beyond all of this, soar is about the human spirit and our lifelong dance with life’s challenges and even demons. From its searching and worried opening measures to the bright climactic final moments of the piece the work seems to constantly betray its concerto-like drama of contrasts. The work seeks to capture some of the breath and texture of life: struggle and triumph, defeat and redemption, nobility and loss. The orchestrated version of this work was completed in November, 2006 and is dedicated with much affection to the soloist, Christian Wojtowicz and conductor Tze Law Chan.
DURATION: 25 minutes
ae33—Blaze-Horn Concerto (1998)
DURATION: 27 minutes
ae23—Guitar Concerto (1992)
DURATION: 31 minutes