(audience applauds) (soft music) - Good evening and welcome to Orchestra Hall.

I'm your host tonight, Brian Newhouse and this is Minnesota Orchestra.

Tonight, a concert of discovery.

We call the program MusicMakers.

What are you gonna be hearing tonight?

Well, hundreds of composers from all around the world have sent us their most imaginative new scores.

Tonight, the Minnesota Orchestra will perform seven pieces from seven, particularly exciting young composers.

These are our music makers.

They're part of this year's Composer Institute, which is now in its 20th year.

We're gonna be meeting each one briefly on stage and hear where they feel classical music is heading.

Each composer by the way, has written about their piece.

And you can find their program notes on our website to learn more about the works that'll be premiered tonight.

This group of seven has been in residence all week with the Composer Institute Director and Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Kevin Puts as well as the Minnesota Orchestra, led by Music Director, Osmo V änsk ä.

Which brings me now to welcome Osmo V änsk ä.

(audience applauds) - Good evening, welcome to the concert.

I have been asked many times, why do we need to do the Composer Institute?

Why do we need to play new music?

And I think it's good to remember that even people, even those people who believe that the dead composers are the best composers they have been alive.

And once in their life, they were young composers.

(audience laughs) So the other reason is that it's very good for the young composers to get their pieces to be played by a great orchestra.

And often the case is that some school orchestras, youth orchestras are playing their music, but that's as you can hear very soon, these pieces are often very complicated.

And if you don't have a first class orchestra, then the composer actually doesn't know, is this what I wrote?

Or is this what the orchestra is playing, because they cannot do it better?

So it's our service for the composers, yes, this is exactly what you wrote.

And that is the best way for them to learn and make the next piece.

Yes, this is the way how I want to go or to change something.

So those two reasons are very good and important for me.

That's the reason why we play these concerts.

- So let's dive into the music.

The very first piece is by Sam Wu, inspired by global weather maps of wind patterns, a piece he calls, "Wind Map".

(dramatic, bright music) (gentle music) (bright music) (dramatic music) (dramatic, bright music) (gentle music) (audience applauds) (audience cheers) That is "Wind Map" by Sam Wu.

Sam, a native of Melbourne Australia, grew up in Shanghai, has lived in New York, in Boston, and now is pursuing a doctorate in Houston.

Sam, fantastic way to get us going.

- Thank you.

- You have looked at computer screens and you're watching data in these weather maps and you turn it into something that is kind of magical.

How does that experience of looking at a screen, how does that go into your imagination?

- Yeah, Brian, so what I'm really fascinated by is this confluence of the mathematical data of wind, but how when it is visualized, it looks like van Gogh brush strokes, you know?

Different colors correspond to different wind speeds and so and forth.

And that confluence of the empirical and aesthetic really inspire me as a composer.

- Oh, that's beautiful, thank you.

Wonderful way to start us off.

- Thank you.

- This is Sam Wu, "Wind Map".

(audience applauds) (audience cheers) (audience applauds) Our next composer is a native of Uzbekistan and her name is Adeliia Faizullina She's now getting her doctorate at Brown University in Rhode Island, welcome Adeliia.

And for the benefit of our radio audience on Minnesota Public Radio, they cannot see that you have come out here with a white cane.

You've been blind since you were a very little girl.

What I'm curious about, how does your relationship to sound come to life in your music?

- I navigate and experience my environment through sound.

And the sounds that surround me are often the source of inspiration for my music.

And so when I was visiting Bolghar, an ancient city in Tatarstan, I was fascinated by this phenomena when the wind changes the direction and all the sudden cuts off the sounds you hear, and you start hearing some other sounds coming from afar.

So I tried to yeah, portray this phenomena in my piece and just really looking forward to hearing it.

(laughs) Yeah.

- Thank you, Adeliia Faizullina and her piece is the depiction of this ancient city of Bolghar, and that is its title, thank you very much, Adeliia.

- Thank you.

(audience applauds) (dramatic, gentle music) (soft music) (dramatic music) (soft music) (dramatic music) (gentle music) (dramatic music) (gentle music) (dramatic music) (gentle music) (audience applauds) - That is Adeliia Faizullina's "Bolghar".

(audience applauds) Our next composer is Ryan Lindveit, his piece called "Close Up At A Distance".

And Ryan as I was, I snuck into dress rehearsal this week and was listening to your piece.

And I was looking down at my lap as the orchestra began to play.

And I heard a sound I had never heard on this stage before.

And it was a sound of a wolf howling at the moon.

- Yeah.

- How did you do that?

- Yeah, so this fantastic French horn section, if they depress their valves halfway down, they can make this really slow, continuous glissando sound and it's actually part of this wider texture at the very beginning.

I had this image of seeing the earth from far away where you can see the stars in the background and then slowly zooming in into one spot on the ground.

That spot is Interlochen, Michigan, which is one of the co-commissioners, The Interlochen Center for the Arts for this piece.

We have music about these verdant grids in Northern Michigan, dotted by lakes and trees.

And then we zoom out and then zoom into New York City for the other co-commissioner of the piece, the New York Youth Symphony, where there are grids of streets and avenues dotted by taxi cabs and raucous people and police whistles.

And then we zoom in at the very end for a duet for piano and trumpet alone.

And the movement is called the overview effect, which is this feeling that astronauts got when they first saw the earth from space as this fragile blue orb deserving of our protection.

- And you have a wonderful, very dramatic last note of this and who gets that?

- That's the solo trumpet player.

He comes on stage, first he's off stage at a distance then at the very end, close up.

- Okay and keep your eyes on him.

He does something very cool at the very end, okay?

That's all I'm saying.

This is Ryan Lindveit's "Close Up At A Distance".

Thank you, Ryan.

- Thank you.

(audience applauds) (bright music) (dramatic music) (soft, dramatic music) (bright music) (soft, dramatic music) (dramatic music) (soft music) (dramatic music) (soft, dramatic music) (audience applauds) (audience cheers) That's Ryan Lindveit's "Close Up At A Distance".

I wanna welcome to stage next Little Rock native, Henry Dorn.

He's currently getting his doctorate in composition at Michigan State and the title of your piece is "Transitions", which is a lovely kind of, but very broad term.

What is the transition you are describing here?

- Well, Brian, the piece is actually about my mother, Cynthia, who passed from lung cancer in 2017.

And during the course of the last month with her in the hospital, I got a chance to kind of be with her in this state of silence and kind of the hospital walls closing in around you and just there's nothing but you and her in a one-on-one confrontation with death really, and cancer.

And so this piece is about her and about that journey.

- And you think of a piece written in memory of someone and this piece surprises me for it's energy, it's robust sound, including one very proud moment when you have the French horns hold their horns up nice and high.

What's that about?

- Well, you know, my mother for one was a horn player actually.

(laughs) And as it would just so happen and she always had like this melody or this serenity like of song in her heart and kind of carried that with her everywhere that she went.

And so she would always constantly be humming.

And it was odd for me to see her in this state where she's completely silent and there's nothing.

And I just imagined to myself that there was still this song somewhere within her heart.

And so in the middle of the piece, there's this moment of just feeling that silence in the hospital and this coral setting of this melodic line.

And it comes back in the horns at the end as kind of my way of saying this is a robust version of it, of her conquering cancer right at the end.

- Oh that's beautiful.

Can't wait.

This is "Transitions" by Henry Dorn.

(audience applauds) (dramatic music) (soft music) (soft, dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic, bright music) (audience applauds) - That was "Transitions" by Henry Dorn.

Henry is from Little Rock, Arkansas.

And as mentioned, he wrote "Transitions" in memory of his mother who died in 2017.

He describes that music as his reflection on her transition from her life on earth to whatever comes next.

Henry and the rest of the composers are sitting in row 13, I think, tonight at Orchestra Hall.

And he has taken a bow.

I'm Melissa Ousley in the MPR Radio Booth.

Brian Newhouse, who spent many years in this chair is the onstage host tonight with Osmo V änsk ä and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Hello Brian.

- Hello, Melissa.

- It is so interesting to hear you talk with these composers.

And I bet if you're anything like I am, your ears are going crazy about now.

- Oh yeah.

And the thing that really strikes me at least so far tonight is how confidently these young people are making sounds that are just whisper thin and then gradually layering texture on texture on texture to it.

And coming up with massive waves of sound.

Henry Dorn's piece, just heard, perfect example.

- Yeah and I keep thinking about the musicians and Osmo, they're playing music that's entirely new to them.

There's no muscle memory, there's no thinking, oh, we played that a couple of years ago.

And of course it happens seven times.

(laughs) - They're switching gears all the time and just as these composers are as well.

They are charting brand new territory.

Many of them are hearing their sounds for the first time with this symphony orchestra tonight.

So this whole week of the Composer Institute has been an exercise in courage for everybody.

- Yeah courage.

And I think that's one of the things that Kevin Puts really understands, the director of the program.

And I've heard him talk about how young composers have so many fears about people judging their music and how hard it is to challenge yourself to reveal that private, inner voice that you have.

So his goal is to create this environment where they can gain confidence and they can see everyone, you there on stage, Osmo, the musicians and of course the audience, everyone cares about what they're doing.

- Yeah and the wonderful thing about this, this isn't just a one off, this is now the 20th anniversary of this Composer Institute here at the Minnesota Orchestra.

And Melissa, take a guess how many composers have had their works premiered by the orchestra in that time?

- Oh, okay, 127.

- Close, close 148.

- Oh wow.

- So, new music is alive and well here at the Minnesota Orchestra.

Thank you, Melissa.

- Thank you so much, Brian.

- The Composer Institute is really woven into the fabric of this organization.

Let's hear about its history and what makes it so meaningful.

(soft music) - The Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute evolved out of the perfect pitch reading sessions.

It was a program designed in the mid-90s out of our longtime commitment to nurturing living composers, was designed to give Minnesota composers an opportunity to hear their music played by a symphony orchestra.

In 2001, we expanded the reach from simply Minnesota composers to invite people nationally to apply for the program.

In 2017, Kevin Puts came on board.

Kevin is a composer who won a Pulitzer for his opera, "Silent Night", which was co-commissioned by the Minnesota Opera right here in town.

- My aim since I've been the director is to find composers at a very high level, rather than composers who are just sort of getting their feet wet with orchestra.

Composers who have done it before, they've written for orchestra before, but they haven't experienced their work played under sort of ideal circumstances by a really a sort of world class orchestra.

So yes, it's a very competitive process.

- About 300 composers roughly each year apply for the program and we choose seven.

The composers come for an entire week here in residence with the orchestra.

- It's always been kind of a combination of seminars with me on various aspects of, you know, being a composer, developing a career, even things like copyright law, engraving scores, making parts, being professional, getting your music out there.

I try to address any questions that might come up, you know, as these composers are sort of embarking on a career as a professional composer.

But really the main event is this concert and the rehearsals that lead up to the concert.

And it's always astonishing for the composers because really they've never heard their music played at this level be before.

And in fact, my first experience with this program when I came on as director was that I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe the kind of commitment that the orchestra and Osmo bring to these pieces.

It's the same as they would bring to any Beethoven Symphony or Shestakova Symphony.

And that is a very rare thing.

And it's always, you know, it's always exciting for me to see the composer's reaction to that at the first rehearsal.

- I think that it's important for the young composers that they are going to hear how could professional orchestra is playing their pieces because sometimes they have like school orchestras or youth orchestras playing.

But if you are composer, you need to know exactly what is the sound.

- [Mele] Osmo and Kevin are both extremely generous in not only the time and attention that they give to the scores, but to the people who created them.

- So we have composers with a great diversity of backgrounds and styles, and that's what I'm looking for.

You know, it's not only about finding, you know, the best composers, but also making a really interesting evening.

It's a subscription concert and what we want is seven pieces that compliment each other, that put on display the great variety of music that's out there among young composers these days.

(soft music) This is a stepping stone for many of them.

Some of them go onto formal commissions, you know, with orchestras, some of them have gone into residencies with orchestras and, you know, teaching positions, et cetera, you know, a composer's life is, there's a lot of variety.

You know, they don't only write for orchestra.

They sometimes write for chamber musicians.

They write for wind ensembles.

Some of them write opera, film music.

But the orchestra just continues to be of great excitement and interest.

It's just an incredible invention that lets a composer kind of express everything they need to express because there's such variety.

There's such a wealth of sounds that can be combined.

So for sure, I think the composers who are part of this program, it's not their last experience with orchestra because they clearly love it enough to do it well.

(soft music) Osmo, he approaches it with such commitment and you know, he's a composer himself and he understands, you know what it's like, I think, you know, to put something in front of an orchestra for the first time.

And so I think he understands that perspective.

It's just, it's a tremendous week.

It's always kind of inspiring for me as a composer, even, you know, it makes me wanna write for orchestra.

I learn often from these students.

You know, there are things that they're doing that I don't do.

And it inspires me to try new things in my own music.

- It's fascinating to see that next generation coming and having their ideas and it's our job is to play new music too.

We cannot live at the museum.

So some of those composers might be big names in the future.

Also part of that is what they are learning here when they come.

So that is our responsibility to help them to be better artists, better composers.

(soft music) - What a legacy, Osmo V änsk ä and the Minnesota Orchestra working to develop these emerging composers, led by the Composer Institute director, Mr. Kevin Puts.

It's great to see you again, Kevin.

- Hey Brian, thank you.

- You have been overseeing this project on an annual basis for many years, but of course we had to take a pause last year because of COVID.

So was the stack of submissions double the height?

- Well, actually we chose these seven composers before the lockdown happened, so they've been waiting.

- Okay.

- Anxiously - Two years.

- Yes, two years to hear these pieces.

So it's a pretty exciting night.

- Oh my gosh.

And because of the pandemic, which has changed everything for everyone everywhere.

- Yeah.

- How has this changed a composer's life, the opportunities, the challenges of new music?

- Well, I think for one thing, audiences are really hungry to hear live performance and it could be anything, you know, I mean, could be Beethoven, it could be new works for orchestra by emerging composers.

So I feel like there's a lot of commissioning going on not only in orchestra, but in opera.

You know, the world has changed a lot.

And our world, the classical world is changing and broadening, I think by the day, which I think is gonna make for a much richer experience for everybody when the dust settles.

- Did your own path to becoming a composer have a stop in Minnesota like this, or a stop anywhere like this?

- It really didn't.

You know, I was very lucky to receive a few commissions pretty early on, I guess when I was close to the age of these seven composers for professional orchestras.

And in many ways I felt maybe I wasn't quite ready yet.

And this is really fantastic.

I mean, to have this week, not only the rehearsals of the orchestra, but seminars with various people in the business and just learning in a very nurturing environment how to write for orchestra.

- Is this experience in Minnesota unique in the country?

- No and it's because 20 years ago, this was really the only thing of its kind and many orchestras have followed suit and developed programs like this, though in no way biased opinion at all, I think this is still the best.

- Of course, of course, yeah.

And you are a teacher of composers as well as being a composer yourself.

What are these seven students, because they're all doctoral students and your own students teaching you even as a veteran composer.

- Ah, that's the best part.

I mean, I learn every week I learn from them.

You know, they play me things that they're into from all, I mean, all sorts of things, you know, modern, contemporary, you know, classical music, pop music.

It sort of keeps me, you know, keeps my ears fresh and it definitely has an impact on the music I write, for sure.

- Well, thank you very much, Kevin, lets you get it back out to the, take your seat in the second half.

Beautiful selections.

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

Looking forward to the second half tonight, especially how imaginatively these composers have written the sounds for an orchestra.

I'm paying a special attention tonight to the percussion elements, because the percussionists, they're doing such innovative things.

They're using a violin bow like a mallet, they're wetting their finger on a water glass to create humming.

And so with that in mind, we thought it was high time for you to learn more about the members of this amazing percussion section.

(dramatic music) - The percussions to the Minnesota Orchestra are a great bunch of guys who are my sincere colleagues and who I love coming to work with every day.

(dramatic music) - The three of us that just are playing percussion all the time have been doing that together for 23 years.

- You just start to know, oh, this is what somebody else is gonna do.

This is where they're gonna feel the beat.

This is where they're gonna feel the beat.

- For percussion obviously like where you place a note is everything right?

Like, you know, we're talking about the front side of the beat or the back side of the beat or how you follow conductor.

(dramatic music) The role of percussion in an orchestra, it could be the drum set, right?

It could be keeping a pulse, it could be driving.

It can just be the sparkle, it can be shine.

It can be something low and ominous that you're not quite sure what it is, so it can just trigger a mood.

I mean it can carry the melody too.

(dramatic music) - As principal, a pretty significant portion of my job is sitting down with a piece of music and figuring out how it's gonna get played by a certain number of players.

Like a composer can ask for a tambourine.

We have 20 tambourines.

- All of these instruments give us a different kind of tamber or texture.

For instance, the single row as you might expect, and these are really light jingles, give a very soft, articulate sound.

(soft tambourine sounds) So this is a double row tambourine and we use it for louder playing.

(dramatic tambourine sounds) - It's really fun to try and figure out what instrument fits best with a specific piece.

- We're doing the piece "La Mer", which involves the orchestra bells, but also involves some of these cymbals, to give a sense and feeling of the crashing of waves.

So let me just give you an idea what a pair of mallets would sound like on a couple of cymbals.

(cymbals sound dramatically) We can also use this rake, which are just little pieces of metal put together.

(cymbals sound quietly) We can also use various triangle beaters to get a similar sound.

(cymbals sound quietly) This is what a pair of wood sticks would sound like.

(cymbals sound loudly) I like to try to be as creative as I can by using a variety of cymbals in order to get different sounds that I might hear if I were to go to the ocean.

- It's not this guy is gonna play all these things and this guy's gonna play all these things.

I mean, sometimes a composer has thought it through that way, but a lot of times not.

And even if they have often Brian can think it through better so that we can fit on the stage better.

(soft, dramatic music) - We kind of have to specialize because it's a lot of repertoire and technique to be a percussionist.

And it's a lot of repertoire and technique to be a timpanist.

Being extremely strong in both is kind of difficult.

Erich is the principal timpani.

(dramatic music) - The orchestra owns some nice large things, big mallet instruments.

We have a pile of snare drums and tambourines and cymbals.

Collectively, we kind of fill in all those other more portable instruments, if you will.

As a percussionist, you're always sort of looking for instruments.

Even the last tour we did, I think to Europe, took a train out to Bath and met with a metaler, just triangle maker.

I mean, I heard 20 triangles that day.

That's a lot of steel.

(laughs) - The world of triangles, they come like tambourines do in many different shapes and sizes.

We did just recently purchase this triangle, which is called a buddy in time.

What makes a triangle really good is its ability to create a lot of different overtones.

So there's a lot of shimmer to the sound, rather than just kind of like one specific sound that almost is pitched.

That's why triangles kind of get a bad rap.

And this is just an idea what a really good triangle would sound like.

(triangle chimes softly) This is one we used recently when we recorded Mahler Symphony.

It has a clangier sound, but when the orchestra's playing, it will cut the textures and the sonorities of the orchestra.

And it doesn't need to be as delicate a sound.

(triangle chimes softly) - Orchestra Hall Stage, it's a great acoustic as anybody who's sat in this hall knows.

But like every, you know, every strength can also present a challenge, right?

So there's a lot of resonance cross a fairly shallow but wide stage.

(dramatic music) So there's just a little bit of anticipation that has to be there with everything.

And in our hall, you kind of have to learn that if you're on the far side or what you hear across the stage is even more delayed.

(dramatic music) - The delay is a big thing.

What affects that to a great degree is how much we're playing.

There's some Bruckner Symphony where there is a cymbal crash and a triangle roll at the same time.

Two people and they each play one note for an entire symphony.

And then there's pieces where we're, you know, we've got just, you know, dozens of instruments set up around us.

And like that setup is the instrument, so it's not like, you can't think of it as this is marimba.

And this is a glockenspiel, these are toms.

It's the integration of all this big setup.

And that creates the instrument.

(dramatic music) - It is always amazed me to watch a great percussion section at work.

I mean, the way they choreograph their movements between the members of the piece, during the piece, and they get ready to play an instrument that they might have no relationship with, that they just played with, going maybe from a snare drum to a marimba and then onto a pair of cymbals, it is amazing.

As principal percussion, Brian Mount said, "it's the integration of that setup "that creates the instrument".

Now percussion is just one of the many sections of the 80 plus players of the Minnesota Orchestra on stage tonight, led by music director, Osmo V änsk ä.

If you're just joining us, welcome.

This is MusicMakers, it's a night of discovery.

So we're partway through hearing seven new works by seven composers, all of whom sent in their scores hoping that they would be one of the very lucky few among hundreds to have their performances tonight.

This evening can have a huge impact on their career.

Over the past 20 years of this MusicMakers event, these composers are now working artists, they've become Pulitzer Prize finalists.

They've become Grammy nominees writing for Hollywood.

The next Beethoven might be walking on this stage tonight.

Well, speaking of walking on this stage, intermission is ending.

The orchestras are just about to tune.

I'll see you on stage in just a minute for the second half of tonight's program.

(soft music) (audience applauds) I wanna wish my friend and colleague Fred Child all the best.

He wanted to be here on stage tonight and wish him a very quick recovery.

And I also wanna say thanks to a couple of people and organizations without whom we would not be here tonight, the composer Aaron Jay Kernis, the American Composers Forum and of course the director of our Institute today, Kevin Puts, it's remarkable what they have done to create this event.

And last and most profoundly, these amazing artists of the Minnesota Orchestra.

(audience applauds) (audience cheers) We're with composer, Bobby Ge now and Bobby, you've been sitting out in the audience watching these amazing musicians hard at work.

These are brand new scores for them.

They've picked them up and they're just tenacious in making them come to life.

And it's serious work.

And your piece is called, "Remember To Have Fun".

(audience laughs) - Yes.

To me, I think actually that there's something just very profoundly beautiful and very human actually, really about just the nature of fun, you know?

That we do things sometimes for no reason other than the fact that it's exciting, that it's beautiful, that it's entertaining.

And I find that just kind of wonderful and very pure, whether you're, I don't know, riding a bike somewhere, or you're watching a movie or you're studying some horrible thing like physics or something like that or if you're playing music, you can do these things for fun and that amazes me.

I love that and it's something that I try to channel in I think all the music that I write, but definitely especially this piece, hence the title.

- And what a great lesson for the last couple of years of a pandemic, which have not been renowned for their fun.

(audience laughs) - Not at all, no, this piece was started about three, four months into the pandemic.

And I think where the whole title came from, where the whole like impetus for the piece came from was that I was not having fun, I mean, you know, sitting there at home, (audience laughs) sort of like, you know, feeling existential and everything.

It became important for me to remind myself like why I write music, why I do music at all.

So, yeah and I hope that that's a good reminder to everyone, whether its musicians.

- Everybody, everybody.

On stage, in the audience, watching at home, wherever you're, remember to have fun.

Let's get our music director back on stage for Bobby Ge's, "Remember To Have Fun".

Osmo V änsk ä.

(audience applauds) (dramatic music) (soft music) (soft, dramatic music) (bright music) (dramatic music) (soft, dramatic music) (dramatic music) (audience applauds) (audience cheers) That's Bobby Ge's, "Remember To Have Fun".

Joining me on stage right now is Nina Shekhar, she's a Detroit native and she's getting her doctorate in composition from Princeton.

Welcome, Nina.

Composers obviously write notes that make music, that make sound, that's thing one, but you've got a really interesting role for silence in your music as well.

Why?

- It's a little bit like speaking, you know, if we have many things to say, unless we have that moment to stop and listen, none of it really means anything.

And the same thing goes for composing.

You know, so often we're focused on putting ink on the page, but so much is said on the spots where we don't put ink.

And I was really inspired by Hindustani music in which there's always a soloist who performs and other people listen and they follow them.

And it's all about this practice of hearing each other.

And I really wanted to build that into the orchestra.

- That's beautiful.

And how do you get that shades of light and dark, which is in the title, "Lumina", light.

- I was really interested in building contrast in terms of the orchestration.

And I wanted to create this idea of shadows using these really dense clouds.

And I used something called microtones, which is different kinds of tunings of the same note.

And so it creates this big blur effect.

And I bring the light by having these harmonic sounds, which have this bright tamber.

- That's beautiful.

This is called "Lumina" and it's by Nina Shekhar.

(audience applauds) (soft, gentle music) (dramatic music) (soft music) (dramatic, gentle music) (soft music) (dramatic, gentle music) (soft music) (audience applauds) (audience cheers) That's Nina Shekhar's "Lumina".

(audience applauds) And we'll wrap up tonight with one more piece, this is by Molly Joyce.

It is called "Over and Under", welcome Molly.

We've got 60 or 70 fantastic musicians who've been playing their hearts out all night.

And you said, but wait, we need one more.

And that is the sound of the organ, it's gonna be heard for the first time tonight.

Why an organ?

- Sure, so I really love organ instruments overall.

I especially play this toy organ instrument a lot, which fits my physically impaired left hand really well.

So I love thinking about organ sounds in general, especially with the sustained sound and also 'cause especially the pipe organ has many similarities to that of the orchestra.

It has woodwind, brass, string sounds, so I love exploring that shared yet divergent relationship in this piece.

- And the title "Over and Under", take us into that.

- Sure, So it was originally written for this huge organ at Yale University, it has one pipe that goes under the hall, so I really love that idea of the sound really enveloping you in every way.

- Shake the hall.

- Yes.

(laughs) - Thank you, this is a wonderful way to wrap it up tonight.

Thank you all for joining us tonight.

And we're gonna go out with a bang.

This is "Over and Under" by Molly Joyce.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) (soft music) (soft, dramatic music) (dramatic music) (soft, dramatic music) (audience applauds) (audience cheers)