Nocturne for Strings & Piano (2015)
Performance History:
Bethel Chamber Orchestra Steven Thompson, conductor 2015 Spring Tour (Pacific Northwest) Bethel Chamber Orchestra Lynda Bradley Vacco, conductor Benson Great Hall (Arden Hills, MN) 27 March 2015 Recognition: Honorable mention in the Holland Symphony Orchestra's Young American Composer Competition |
It is strangely gratifying as a composer to look back on a piece and remember how it came together. In writing this Nocturne, I figuratively put to rest several old abandoned musical ideas, piecing together a constellation of fragments that hadn’t quite nodded off. I can still point out some measures from an unfinished clarinet and piano duet, a line from a discarded setting of a Christina Rossetti poem, a couple chords I once hastily scrawled on the back of an envelope. I think most artists find it satisfying to gather disparate ideas and compose them—or perhaps “compost” them—into a single unified piece. The writer Ray Bradbury called such creative fodder his “conglomerate heap of trash,” but adds that “it burns with a high flame.”
One of the highlights and greatest honors of my time at Bethel University was to write this piece for Dr. Vacco and the Bethel Chamber Orchestra. It is dedicated to her and the members of the 2014-2015 orchestra, with thanks for so many good memories. |
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