Program notes

Every composer tries to write for orchestra – usually long before they should – before they have the technical skills to do so or the trust of a conductor or ensemble to perform their music.

I was not immune to this allure. My effort was a 10-minute tone poem, also titled “…a slightly greener thing…”, the title borrowed from a passage early in American author Richard Powers’ book “The Overstory”:

“A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we would drown you in meaning.

The pine she leans against says: Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”

At the center of the orchestral piece is a lovely and joyful tune that evokes the foundational care and tenderness the world has for its living things – a world not indifferent to life but supremely hospitable to it, actively bringing about its existence and facilitating its evolution and flourishing across four billion years. Though the original piece didn’t gain a champion to perform it, there was much in it I was proud of and thought should live beyond this first ill-fated foray into orchestral writing.

The idea to write a set of variations on this repurposed tune also comes from the borrowed-from passage from Powers – the variations akin to all the different ways the world sings to us, showing its care for us through gifts of food, water, shelter, medicine, weather – giving of its very body for us to live. I thought that perhaps meditating on this idea – that the earth is not indifferent to us, but loves us, wants us to be and do well – and expressing that across two dozen variations might help that message sink in, inviting reflection on how we can show our appreciation in return.

A final note: in the course of writing the variations, I learned of several pregnancies among my family and friends. Some of the variations are dedicated to and named for the then-pending child/children, with variations assigned according to which one I was writing when I got the news.

Theme

1. Hundred-acre woods

2. Double Dawkins

3. Gornergrat

4. Baby Amidon

5. Budget Bolero

6. Fire and Brimstone

7. The Flentrop Organ

8. Billy Boberts had a Baby

9. Chatfield Hill

10. Hot potato

11. Goodfoot

12. Tabor Circuit

13. Light in the dark

14. Mountain-top meditation

15. The original

16. The path forward

17. Bach, fastforward

18. Gallop

19. Ivory, then Ebony

20. Slap happy

21. Leonard-to-be

22. Distilled

23. Spectral

24. Burn Bright