D[RAM]EDY (2023)
Concerto for Piano with Wind Ensemble
Duration ca. 25:00
PROGRAM NOTES
In two movements:
trying to forget
trying to remember
D[RAM]EDY is a concerto for piano and wind ensemble commissioned by a consortium of collegiate wind ensembles across the United States. The commissioning schools include Kansas University, Kansas State University, Lawrence University, University of Central Florida, University of Houston, University of Missouri Kansas City, and University of Wisconsin. The piece was played for the first time in Steinmetz Hall in Orlando, Florida, with pianist Jenny Lin performing the solo part.
The following program notes accompanied the first performance:
No remembrance is fully happy or fully sad. The emotional quotient of memories shifts and slides with the passage of years. A miserable weekend spent camping in the rain might, in time, become a fond recollection of hours spent with friends. A cheerful holiday celebration might, after the passing of a loved one who was there, become tinged with retrospective melancholy. Joy and sorrow are like the two faces of a coin, one aimed into the future, the other into the past, to be experienced in different ways from different vantage points. D[RAM]EDY attempts to capture this ambiguity. It rushes angrily away from a memory, blinded by tears, only to discover that the memory was, in the end, a happy one, meant not only to be retained, but cherished.