2022 | c. 22'
For Ingrid Anderson In Memory of LuAnn Hustvedt
Premiered by Ingrid Anderson and the Boulder Symphony with Devin Patrick Hughes conducting.
It’s getting harder
To live without
Faith, or you,
Or whatever
We choose to call
What calls
To us in the quiet.
- Kevin Young, “Book Rate”
Only through death, does life gain its meaning. This concerto is a memorial, an elegy, and a celebration. It is a space in which to grieve, remember, and love.
The title of the first movement comes from a phrase in Kevin Young’s poem “Book Rate,” from his collection Dear Darkness. The book explores the poet’s relationship with loss and grief in the wake of his father’s death. This movement is meant to express those thoughts and feelings that we can’t quite put into words following the loss of a loved one: those thoughts that come to us in the quiet hours. This movement is meant as an elegy, and as a space for us to simply sit with those thoughts, reflecting and remembering.
If the first movement is an elegy, the second is a celebration. It’s a celebration of life and our time on earth with those we hold dear. It’s also a meditation on what we hold on to when we lose a loved one. In this movement, I took inspiration from the extraordinary life lived by Lou Ann Hustvedt. The dancing melodies and rhythms – so at home on the oboe – are meant to evoke the playfulness and unbridled joy on display in her life. The energy of the music can only hint at a life of sailing, piloting, skydiving, surfing, and so much more.
The title of the second movement is a reference to those aspects of our loved ones that stay with us after they’re gone. It’s our values, our turns-of-phrase, our sense of humor, and the physical aspects, too: our eyes or nose, our hair. This movement is about those things that are preserved after death, and, when taken with the first movement, about the memories we cling to.