letters to distant cities
Piece Information
Instrumentation: piano solo
Duration: ~ 16 minutes
Date: © 2024
Commissioned by:
Voices of Change, Benjamin Hochman
Program note:
The year 2020 with its many global upheavals coincided with another, more personal string of changes. In the few months surrounding the beginning of isolation, a set of close musical friends made the decision (separately) to move away from the city where we all came together. While stuck inside for that year, a few of us took to writing letters to each other back and forth to while away the hours and days.
Many of these communiques were cheekily over-written (a bit like this note...); I even took to cranking mine out on a restored type-writer I'd given my wife a few years before. Silly as they were, these letters were little focal points of imagination about my good friends' new surroundings, and much more charming than head-ache inducing video-chats. As it turns out, these departures were permanent and this little musical community is now bi-coastal and international. Since a few years have passed, it seemed a worthwhile endeavor to bring some of these epistolary memories back together and share them. The three pieces here are dedicated to three of these composers and their new homes. The music only sometimes depicts the people themselves. At other times it is their environment, imagined or remembered, and at others still, just a memory of conversations and music (with only minor thievery of material).
All my best, -Will
More about this Piece :
Performances:
2023
Score and parts available for purchase
See the Contact page.