Violin Concerto (“The Mountains We Climb”) (2026)
Version A: For Solo Violin and Orchestra
(2222/4221/timp/2perc/hp/strings)
Version B (coming in 2027): For Solo Violin and Chamber Orchestra
(2212/2200/perc/strings)
F0r violinists Yevgeny Kutik, Stefan Jackiw and Curtis Stewart
Commissioned by lead commissioner Norman Solomon, M.D. and co-commissioned by Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, Boise Philharmonic, Bay Atlantic Symphony, Friends of Chamber Music and Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra, Stanford Symphony Orchestra, and Hopkins Symphony Orchestra
Duration: c. 29 minutes
Program Note
My Violin Concerto, subtitled “The Mountains We Climb,” takes as its central idea the ascent of a mountain. This climb is both literal and symbolic, representing a striving to surmount challenges greater than oneself, both personal and societal. The orchestra serves as a musical representation of a mountain, a monumental force composed of a multitude of voices, with which the lone soloist is put into dialogue. The orchestra evokes sounds of the natural world through sweeping conducted gestures, sending waves of sound across the stage that bring us outside of the concert hall.
I began composing this work at the start of the new year at a mountaintop residency in Italy. As I composed, I looked out at another mountain across the valley, framed by my window. I was struck by how the landscape shifted dramatically from day to day: from tranquil to stormy, from verdant green pastures to an austere blanket of windswept snow. The mountain was immovable yet slight changes in the environment had an outsize impact on the world around it.
On New Year’s Eve, a few days before I began penning the first notes, I spent the evening with two refugee poets from Ukraine, who have made that mountaintop their new home since the start of the war in their country. As the new year arrived, I went to the piano and searched for a song to play that we all knew. I chose “Amazing Grace.” After I finished, one of them quietly recited the final lyric aloud: “was blind, but now I see.” We sat with those words. I told them I hoped the new year would bring them home.
In a sense, my concerto follows a path paved by canonical concertos of the past in that it is propelled by a central struggle between soloist and orchestra. However, it differs from many in that its three movements follow a single dramatic arc with one set of themes that evolve over its span. The movements are titled Act I, Act II, and Act III, each a new scene in an unfolding narrative.
Act I begins with the introduction of the two central motives of the work: the stable interval of a perfect fifth, beginning first as a drone and later turning into a melodic leap; and the unstable half-step, the smallest building block of music that can tilt the music from major to minor, a seismic harmonic shift. Both work together to create triads that move in and out of focus, guiding the emotional landscape and evoking the blues in a distant way: a tradition that holds grief and hope in the same breath, joining major and minor together at once. The music begins with an expansive, sacred stillness and continues through varied sonic terrain.
Act II begins in a darker place. The soloist enters and begins a lamenting dialogue with three muted violins in the orchestra that gradually draws the full string orchestra into weeping song. As the violinist climbs step-by-step up a sonic staircase laid out by the orchestra, ultimately arriving at the summit, we gradually realize the orchestra is not something to be battled, but to be accepted.
Act III begins atop the mountain with a sense of clarity. An oboe begins to sing, and teaches its melody to the violin, who fully embraces it in the final cadenza. Something gradually comes into focus for the soloist and audience together, shining new light on what came before. Perhaps the hardest mountain to climb is changing our own perspective. And, the new sense of home we find may be unexpected but no less meaningful.
The concerto was commissioned at the behest of Norman Solomon and grew into a collaborative enterprise: a consortium of three violinists and eight orchestras premiering the work across the United States, each bringing their own interpretation to the climb, and by doing so, joining together as a larger community. Each soloist’s voice has found its way into the score.
My concerto was commissioned by Norman Solomon, M.D. and co-commissioned by Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, Boise Philharmonic, Bay Atlantic Symphony, Friends of Chamber Music and Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra, Stanford Symphony Orchestra, and Hopkins Symphony Orchestra. It is dedicated to violinists Yevgeny Kutik, Curtis Stewart and Stefan Jackiw, who will give the premiere performances, and to Norman Solomon, M.D., with gratitude.
View Online Score
To come.