Performances

Premiere: Symposium Chamber Ensemble, Ernest Bloch Music Festival, Newport, Oregon, June 30, 2003

Amber Dimoff, violin, Julie King, ‘cello, Richard King, horn, Matthew Bassett, percussion, Linda Jones, piano, Thiago Tiberio, conductor, Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music, April 6, 2008

Program Note

Close (Far) was composed for the 14th Ernest Bloch Music Festival. The work takes as its main motif the call of a mourning dove. The call represents the idea of thoughts far away while at the same time being where one physically is—in other words, I wanted to create a sense of simultaneous being in two places or times. The motive derived from the call has both a pitch class element and a rhythmic element. The horn, with its unique timbral colorations, seemed to me an ideal instrument for conveying this feeling in a concert work, with strings, piano, suspended cymbals and marimba.