After presenting concertato to German composer Helmut Lachenmann at a masterclass at UC San Diego during my masters degree, Helmut came up to me, gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear to keep doing what I was doing. concertato was also the piece that elicited the first genuine interest in my undergrad composition mentor. Despite being from 2006, it is still the piece I think of as my first mature work.

concertato is the first piece that demonstrates my voice and concerns as a composer. I worked on it over the summer of 2006 while at home in western Massachusetts. I had plenty of time, newly single and without a summer job.

Writing concertato was a transformative experience for me, easily the most difficult compositional process for any piece I have ever composed. In it, I was not just writing down my ideas, but creating my own technique of musical development in the process. My inner ear was asking for many rhythms and textures that I had no idea, at first, how to write out, but I made myself learn how to do so day by day.

The name concertato comes from the idea of an instrument being featured as a soloist, and each instrument gets its own section to be the focus here. The flute is featured at first, followed by the viola, cello, and finally the violin (the piano does not have its own section but instead has many flourishes in the margins).

Complex polyrhythmic webs often support, contrast, or exist independently of the solo parts, with more active counterpoint and articulations emerging in reaction to the solo instrument’s provocations.

concertato contains most of the seeds of my music since then, even the more referential, collage-like music of recent years (listen to the final chord, and ask yourself where you’ve heard it before…).