I just spent a month composing in a 19th Century barn in Virginia. This was a refuge from the plague, protests, political upheaval, and wildfires that pushed my mental health to the brink. Dark days descended in a very literal way: ignited by once-in-a-century lightning storms, California wildfires suffocated the skies with smoke so thick that it felt like night.
Fight or flight? We chose the latter. The very next day my family and I boarded on a near-empty plane clutching a keyboard and guitar.
The Bates farm in King & Queen County is not a fancy mink-and-manure outfit like the ones found on the outskirts of Washington DC. It’s a working farm that has been in the family so long, there’s a Bates graveyard full of folks named Thomas Jefferson Bates (an honorific name only).
Working at the first piano I ever played seemed a fitting place to write a new piano concerto. Daniil Trifonov, the Grammy-winning wunderkind-gone-superstar of classical piano, brings an almost mystical vision to his interpretations of Bach, Rachmaninoff, Pärt, and Chopin, and it’s been a joy to write this piece for him and two orchestras close to my heart, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony.
Fortunately, Daniil performs on Steinways that all have a working low Bb, which is busted on my old upright. It’s also so out of tune, you feel like you’re playing in a saloon out of spaghetti Western. But that’s okay. Staying on the farm is always about returning to roots.
The barn is a marvelous place to write. For one thing, it’s separate from my family, whose Zoom calls for school and work dominated the house for six months. I’m a much better composer and family man when I can be solitary when writing.
The barn is also big enough for the obsessive pacing that accompanies my composing. As I walked circles like a caged animal, I listened to a lot of Renaissance madrigals. One goal of this concerto is creating textures so transparent that the beautiful subtleties of Daniil’s playing can be heard. I’m working on a chorale with all manner of delicate ornamentation in the five voices, allowing Daniil to create all manner of colors.
Renaissance music also features a surprising amount of small percussion instruments that intrigue me. Listen to any release by the Italian ensemble Micrologus, and you’ll hear an energetic folk combination of plectrum instruments, tawny winds, and percussion. That’s the opening musical landscape of the concerto.
While I didn’t add many minutes to the concerto while in Virginia, upon returning to California I immediately produced a toccata for the third movement. The sudden productivity was certainly the result of shaking myself out of the listless routine of the past six months. It’s hard to overstate the importance of emotional health on creative output, and for me the change helped enormously.
As we look to a possibly long winter ahead, we should all take extra care to refresh our perspectives. Whether it’s a house rental or a solo backpacking trip, an escape is always welcome.