Amphitheater (2024) for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, & Piano
Amphitheater was commissioned by Copland House for its CULTIVATE 2024 emerging composers’ institute. It was premiered by the Music from Copland House ensemble (Moran Katz, clarinet; Pala Garcia, violin; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; and Margaret Kampmeier, piano) on June 11, 2024 at Elebash Hall, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. CULTIVATE 2024 fellowships and commissions were funded by the Amphion Foundation, ArtsWestchester, ASCAP Foundation, BMI Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Friends of Copland House, Jandon Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, NewMusicUSA, and New York State Council on the Arts.
Program Note
My piece Amphitheater explores a particular vocabulary of luminous harmonic material through an ensemble of four musicians. Most of the time, the ensemble functions less as a group of chamber musicians with distinct voices and more as a conjoined sonic entity – a prism for refracting short melodic lines and other musical fragments. In some ways, the piece is a celebration of the simple beauty of repeated notes played softly on the piano (a sound I can never seem to get away from in my work); yet, these delicate repeated notes often bloom into more dense verticalities derived from the overtone series, usually aided by natural harmonics in the strings. My aim in the end is to move buoyantly between soft unisons and glaring, timbrally rich pillars of sound.