Re-Callings
composed in 2007 - for violin solo and chamber orchestra
As someone who grew up playing in concert and jazz bands - groups that don’t feature members of the string family - string instruments hold a special sway over my imagination. They weren’t the sort of instruments I encountered in my everyday life; they were something special, and decidedly different. For me, nothing embodies this special quality quite like the virtuoso violinist, and so violin concertos holds sway over me like few other works. I love so many of them - Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Berg, Ligeti, Adams...
It was clear that I’d have to make my own eventually, and so I wrote Re-Callings. It’s a restless work, with a slew of melodic ideas that float around throughout the ensemble. But the focus is always on the soloist, who virtuosically dances from one melody to another against the constantly shifting background. The title refers to the constant, unpredictable recycling of ideas that occurs throughout the piece - the most prominent one is loosely adapted from a song by Sufjan Stevens.
Re-Callings was premiered at Indiana University on 11.27.07, with Andres Moran conducting and Véronique Mathieu playing violin. This recording is from a performance by the University of Iowa Center for New Music Ensemble at the 2008 Midwest Composers Symposium, David Gompper conducting and Véronique Mathieu again playing violin.
