Essex Evocations (2016)
String orchestra
Duration: c. 13 mins.
Essex Evocations was commissioned by the Cabot Performing Arts Center in Beverly, Massachusetts, to inaugurate their “Classical at the Cabot” series, and was written for Donald Palma and Symphony by the Sea, who premiered the work in 2017. It is a rhapsodic, single movement work for string orchestra that draws inspiration from the wide-ranging landscape of the Massachusetts north shore, with its forests, meadows, wetlands and sea coast. The opening section explores two lyrical ideas before descending into a chaotic transition leading to a faster, more scherzo-like middle section. Here a cascading, descending figure alternates with an angular, ascending motive, which is in turn interrupted by static blocks of varying configurations. Losing momentum, the music eventually transitions into a slower section that reinterprets the previous material from a new perspective, as one experiences a landscape in different seasons and light. The work ends with a final statement of the main, lyrical motive intertwined with the cascading motive from the middle section, synthesized into a new whole.Symphony (2014)
Large orchestra (2+picc.2+Eng hn.2+bcl.2+contra|4.2.2+btrb.1|timp.2 perc|strings)
Duration: c. 48 mins.
Written for David Hoose and the Boston University Symphony Orchestra, by whom the work was premiered in 2015, the work is dedicated to the composer’s father who passed away in 2013 at the age of 92. He often joked that the only thing he could play was the radio, and symphonic and operatic music was all-important and omnipresent in his life. (No Saturday was complete without the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts!) The musical language of the symphony, cast in four movements, is lyrical and elegiac. The first movement is energetic, building to a series of climaxes before descending down to a low rumble, while the second movement is rhapsodic and varied in tempo, interrupted by frequent scherzo-like outbursts. The main sections of the third movement are articulated by a series of sonorities in the upper strings that expand outward from a central axis. The majority of the material in this movement is dense and chordal. The finale opens with a plaintive motive in the horns that is developed throughout the movement. The music is largely contrapuntal, and is punctuated by long, sinuous, passages in the violins. A full orchestral tutti surge marks the climax of the movement, leading to the horns recalling the open motive. The work ends with a final orchestral tutti wail, followed by a ghostly echo of ringing Tibetan temple bowls.
BU Symphony Orchestra | David Hoose, conductor
Arboreal Memories (2010)
Full orchestra (2.2.2(2. also bcl).2|4.2.2+btrb.1|timp.2 perc|strings)
Duration: c. 12 mins.
Aboreal Memories, a lyrical, single-movement work for large orchestra, was written for David Hoose and the Boston University Symphony Orchestra, by whom it was premiered in 2010. The music juxtaposes two main ideas that are motivically related—yet texturally differientiated. These two ideas are additionally contrasted by slow-moving connective material that articulates the main pitch-class segments, based on augmented triads (the Ur-chord), from which all the motives are derived. The music unfolds in a tripart structure with concluding coda, ending on a soft 12-tone cluster in the strings, articulating the definitive arrangement of the Ur-chord.Symphonia (1986)
Large orchestra (3.2+Eng hn.3.2+cbn|4.3.2+btrb.1|4 perc|piano|strings)
Duration: c. 7 mins.
A single-movement work for large orchestra, Symphonia was one of three winners of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s 1990 Illinois Composer’s Reading Sessions, coordinated by John Corigliano, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, and conducted by Michael Morgan. Emerging out of a low rumbling in the orchestra, the work treats a small cadre of motivic cells through an ever-changing sequence of developmental episodes until reaching a point of maximum density and complexity. From this apex, the music gently devolves, eventually moving through a gossamer web of shimmering upper strings, to return to the quiet obscurity of the opening sounds.