Commissioned By Arizona Friends Of Chamber Music
This work is my fourth string quartet, written for an ensemble that I greatly admire, the Escher Quartet. My deepest thanks are to Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, who commissioned this piece.
The opening movement, Fugue, is an imposing movement based on two central ideas. The first is an introduction composed of fortissimo chords, and the second is a fugue subject, which is first presented in strict fugal fashion but then developed in wildly different ways throughout.
The second movement is an extended meditation that counterbalances the intensity of the fugue. This past summer, I trekked for two weeks in a remote, mountainous corner of Afghanistan called the Wakhan corridor, hiking a similar route to the one Marco Polo took centuries ago. In this desolate but hauntingly beautiful place, sometimes called the Roof of the World, people live in extremely harsh circumstances. As I hiked across the steppe, I returned to this idea of timelessness again and again. I was reminded of a poem: "What the Mountain Saw", by the British poet Philip Gross.
For all of my lifetime, Afghanistan had been a land shrouded in mystery--a place steeped in epic history, difficult to traverse, now seemingly impossible even to visit. Over the years, what had these mountains seen?
I do not intend this movement to be a portrait of a place that I do not have full understanding of, nor a statement of any kind. But I do hope that the listener feels the same timelessness, the same stillness that I felt when walking across this vast and sweeping landscape.
This work was premiered by the Escher Quartet in March 2019 and the premiere performance is below.
2025
Co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Houston, and Chamber Music Monterey Bay for the Escher Quartet
2022
This work was commissioned by La Jolla SummerFest and premiered at the Conrad in La Jolla, CA in August 2022.
2021
Written for Edgar Meyer and the Dover Quartet in 2021
2020
Commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts
2018
Commissioned by Chamber Music America with generous funding provided by the Mellon Foundation
2018
Commissioned By Efe Baltacigil And Nicolas Kendall
2018
Commissioned By Chamber Music Northwest, With Support From New Music USA
2016
Written for Demarre, Anthony McGill, and Michael McHale
2015
Commissioned By Chamber Music Northwest
2014
Commissioned by the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival
2013
Commissioned by the Buffalo Chamber Music Society for the Attacca Quartet
2013
Commissioned by Orchestra 2001
2012
Commissioned by the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington
2010
Written For The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble
2010
Commissioned by the Curtis Institute of Music
2009
Commissioned By Curtis-on-tour for Benjamin Beilman and Yekwon Sunwoo
2009
Commissioned by Music From Angel Fire, Ida Kavafian, Director
2008
Commissioned By The Curtis Institute Of Music
2007
2008 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Award
