String Octet (2022) ~10’

[4 violins 2 violas 2 cellos]

Commissioned by the Moritzburg Festival and the Stiftung Kunst und Musik für Dresden and premiered by Nathan Meltzer, Mira Wang, Kevin Zhu, Karen Gomyo, Lars Anders Tomter, Ulrich Eichenauer, Guy Johnston, and Aleksey Shadrin on August 21, 2022 at the Moritzburg Castle.

When asked to write a string octet, I instantly thought of Mendelssohn’s famous octet. When I was growing up as a young violinist, I had the opportunity to perform the Mendelssohn with a group of my friends, which was an extremely rewarding and satisfying experience. In beginning to plan writing this composition, I asked myself, what was it about the piece that made it so exciting to perform? I concluded that creating the shapes and color changes that Mendelssohn wrote activated my sense of the ensemble as a community. I was not just playing music with people, but we, as a group, created the energy of the piece together. In addition to the energy of group shapes in the Mendelssohn, my octet is influenced by the experiences in my life that have also evoked this feeling of community in music; playing bluegrass and folk music in a Mandolin orchestra and improvising on the violin. The piece is a collage of these multiple influences that, in the beginning of the piece, rapidly cut between one another. The push and pull of energy between players transforms the musical material, and as the piece develops, each of these glimpses into different worlds become longer and longer.