the self that was song Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra (2025)

Premiered October 6, 2025 with Joseph Gotoff and the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, Matthew Scinto, director.

Program Note:

the self that was song takes its title and inspiration from Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Idea of Order at Key West.” In one stanza, Stevens describes a singer whose voice transforms her surroundings so that “the sea, / Whatever self it had, became the self / That was her song.” This image of a voice shaping and creating a world resonated with me as I composed the concerto.

The work is dedicated to cellist Joey Gotoff, whose lyricism and vocal approach to the instrument were equally inspirational. While the concerto contains moments of technical challenge, its driving force is not virtuosity but narrative and song.

The piece begins with a solitary plainchant for the cello—a kind of invocation that sets the tone for the journey to come. A quartet for the soloist and section cellos follows, establishing the primary musical material. I imagined this passage as if the soloist were singing through a vocoder: a single voice harmonized by itself.

From there, tension enters in the form of an agitato idea, restless and disruptive. This energy pushes the music toward a brief climax before yielding to the centerpiece of the concerto: a motet for string quartet. Here, the soloist interacts with the quartet’s lines—at times echoing, at times diverging—until the quartet eventually breaks free from the opening material altogether.

What follows is a struggle to reclaim and reshape the original song. Branching paths appear; conflicts between lyricism and agitation intensify. The agitato returns in full force, leading to a cataclysmic climax. Yet out of this turmoil, the soloist emerges renewed, ultimately reclaiming its voice in a final aria. The concerto closes with a transformation of the opening quartet—a luminous apotheosis that embraces the self, beyond the conflicts of identity and belonging.