Here at Andres & Sons we’ve been ramping up activ­i­ties related to two imminent premières: a new quartet for the Takács called Strong Language and a piano concerto for Jonathan Biss called The Blind Banister. The pieces were written back-to-back and are kind of frater­nal twins, weighing in at 23 minutes and three move­ments each, but with very differ­ent char­ac­ters. Of course it’s hard to find two more dissim­i­lar forms than a string quartet and a piano concerto, each hard to one side of the public-private dichotomy. I tend to think of myself mainly as a chamber music composer—few things are more nerve-wracking than the process of writing for orchestra—but maybe I am finally ready to embrace it. I even wrote for timpani for the first time! Adding timpani is like adding proper capi­tal­iza­tion and good formatting—suddenly whatever you’ve made looks like the genuine article. 

I hope to post at least audio excerpts soon, if not entire pieces, so check back next month.