“Made of Tunes” is my fifth piano concerto, written for Aaron Diehl and the Los Angeles Phil­har­monic. It premieres this Friday, March 22 (the same day my third concerto, The Blind Banister, is released on Nonesuch Records).

In a way, this feels like a home­com­ing and a culmi­na­tion. One of my first real commis­sions came from the LA Phil, for their long-running new music series Green Umbrella; John Adams conducted the premiere of that piece, Nightjar, and will also lead this week­end’s perfor­mances of Tunes. I’ve worked on several things with John and the LA Phil in the inter­ven­ing years, includ­ing Ingram Marshal­l’s chamber concerto Flow. But I’ve never gotten to work with the full band on a main­stage, subscrip­tion series concert. (“Subscrip­tion series” is an odd distinc­tion, but it’s essen­tially the bread and butter of orches­tral program­ming; as a result, these concerts tend to be more musi­cally conser­v­a­tive.) I don’t take such an oppor­tu­nity lightly; I hope audi­ences consider their 27 minutes to have been well-spent.

As a kind of amuse–bouche to the week, there’s a Glass Etudes evening on Tuesday the 19^th. I’ll be playing my standbys, nos. 5 & 6, as well as two that are new to my reper­toire, 11 & 12.