solo violin (2023)
premiere: Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin
October 1, 2023
duration: 9:30
program note
Firmament (2023), for solo violin, was written for violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron, who premiered it on October 1st, 2023 at Momenta Festival VIII at New York City, in partnership with Music for Food, which fights food insecurity in upper Manhattan.
Firmament was influenced by two dystopian modern novels: The Wall (1963), by Austrian author Marlen Haushofer, in which a woman awakens while journeying in the wilderness to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall; and Good Morning, Midnight (2016) by American writer Lily Brooks-Dalton, tracing in parallel the paths of an Arctic researcher and an astronaut, for both of whom external communication has been cut off. The violin, as protagonist, navigates these new, suspended realities–aware of its solitude as well as the firmament eternally surrounding our world.