I’m thrilled to reveal that The Blind Banister, a new album that’s been in the works, in some form, for an outra­geous nine years, will be released by Nonesuch Records on March 22. You can listen to the last movement of Upstate Obscura, my cello concerto, today. The album was recorded this past summer with cellist Inbal Segev, conduc­tor Andrew Cyr, and Metrop­o­lis Ensemble (longtime collab­o­ra­tors who you may remember from Home Stretch).

It’s increas­ingly rare, imprac­ti­cal, and unten­able to record an orches­tra in this level of detail, in a studio envi­ron­ment; this may very well be the last album I make in such a way. I am forever grateful to the collab­o­ra­tors who helped bring it into the world: Andrew Cyr and the musi­cians of Metrop­o­lis Ensemble, Inbal Segev, producer Silas Brown, Jonathan Biss (who commis­sioned and premiered The Blind Banister), Russell Hirsh­field (who commis­sioned and premiered Colorful History), Bob Hurwitz and the team at Nonesuch Records, David Kaplan for a lyrical liner note, Jason Fulford for his enig­matic cover photo, and Ben Tousley for his elegant typography.

Here’s a real live music video for you, made during the record­ing session with cellist Inbal Segev for Agita a couple of years back. Jump cuts; jump scares, even! See me put my hand inside the piano and take it back out again.

Above, the view from the music table during Illinois tech. The show opens Friday; things are sounding and looking stup­den­dous. It’s been a joy to spend time immersed in this music, with these people. If you missed your chance at tickets for this month’s run at Bard, never fear: future produc­tions are mate­ri­al­iz­ing, includ­ing one in Chicago this winter.

I’ve had to tear myself away for a few days for a long-post­poned jaunt to Britt Festival in Jack­sonville, OR. I’ll join Teddy Abrams and the Britt Festival Orches­tra for a perfor­mance of The Blind Banister on Thursday.

I’m very pleased to help trumpet the announce­ment of Sufjan Steven­s’s new album Reflec­tions, a two-piano ballet score that I recorded with Conor Hanick. The bril­liant video above, directed by Brian Paccione, is a perfor­mance of the first track, Ekstasis. The full album is out May 19.

In other Sufjan-related news, I’ve created new arrange­ments and orches­tra­tions for his 2005 album Illinois, which has been chore­o­graphed in its entirety by Justin Peck, premier­ing June 23 at Bard Summer­scape.

Happy new year. In an heroic act of procras­ti­na­tion from writing, I’ve made a new subsec­tion of this site listing the various things I’ve written about music over the years. Thanks to all the artists and record labels who have asked me to write about their record­ings; doing so always teaches me new ways to listen and think about music.

I’m very pleased to present my new work for natural horn quartet, Loud Ciphers. The piece is somewhat atypical in that it was composed, recorded, filmed, and released over the course of just a month—a rare instance of imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion in the usually glacial world of commis­sion­ing new work.

The piece was commis­sioned and performed by the extra­or­di­nary young natural horn special­ist Isaac Shieh, who I was intro­duced to by Nico Muhly (thanks, Nico!). The above perfor­mance seems all the more remark­able with the knowl­edge that it was made during the past week’s intense European heat wave.

Here’s a bit more about the piece, and you can also purchase scores and parts.