How to separate the dancer from the dance?  In the case of Yo-Yo Ma, it’s simply impossible to differentiate between the stunning sounds he creates with his cello and the extraordinary human being holding the instrument.  Asked to create a new recital piece for him to be premiered this month in San Francisco, I thought about both the musician and the man as I composed Hymn for the Future.

The piece is inspired by the starry-sky photograph on the cover of Yo-Yo Ma’s latest release, Notes for the Future, which offers tributes to the next generation in a diversity of styles.  The album’s aesthetic range of the album spans from classical to hip-hop and much in between, and the soundworld is equally rich – with electronic beats and imaginative production weaving around Yo-Yo’s playing.

Equally important is the humanistic impulse behind the album.  Anyone who encounters Yo-Yo knows he has a passionate belief in the power of music to bridge cultures and transcend differences.  In contrast to the tone of much of the conversation on this topic today, Yo-Yo speaks in a positive and aspirational way.  And he does this with the highest musical integrity: few artists in any medium have crossed aesthetic boundaries so substantively.  His collaborations with everyone from Bobby McFerrin to Edgar Meyer have elevated all sides of the equation.

Paying homage to the humanistic sentiment behind the musician, I created a soulful electro-acoustic hymn that conjures the artist amidst a magnificent celestial backdrop, dreaming of hopeful days ahead.  I’ll be performing the piano part on Hymn for the Future when it premieres on November 13 at the new Bowes Center in San Francisco.

There came a moment last year when composing music seemed almost impossible. With no live performances to inspire me and a lockdown-induced melancholic tinge, my normally hyperactive creative spirit lay dormant. But 2021 brought new hope and the return of audiences, little by little, and today I’m grateful to look ahead to a season packed with new projects and long-delayed performances. Here’s a flyover of my activities over the next nine months, with premieres ranging from symphonic to film to opera in cities from San Francisco to to London to Israel.

Philharmonia Fantastique

Inspired by a desire to offer my own kids a fresh guide to the orchestra, Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra premieres this season in a variety of cities. The animated film and score was created to inhabit a popular and relatively recent format: orchestras playing underneath giant movie screens.  ‘Live-to-film’ shows generally happen with blockbuster films, but it’s time the format includes something written specifically for it. This 25-minute journey features a magical Sprite flying inside instruments to see how they work, and it was created with director Gary Rydstrom and animator Jim Capobianco during visits to Skywalker Ranch.

Sometimes accompanying me to the Ranch were my kids and a posse of their friends, playing the role of a slightly suspicious focus group. They responded best to an exuberant piece of art, not a didactic piece of pedagogy, that has elements of mystery and darkness. Equally important is the Sprite, whose journey of self-discovery brings a crucial emotional angle to the story.

With their extensive film experience – Gary won Oscars for his dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park, Jim wrote the story for Pixar’s Ratatouille – they helped solve many of the film’s unique puzzles: namely, how to introduce the many facets of the orchestra without using words.

The work lifts off with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in October, then in the spring with the Chicago and National Symphonies with San Francisco and Pittsburgh performing it next season.

Piano Concerto

Very often I’m asked if, as a symphonic composer, I play all the instruments in the orchestra. I wish I could – but so far, the only instrument I’ve seriously studied is piano. My first compositions poured forth as piano rhapsodies, and the instrument forever holds a special place in me. So it’s been incredibly exciting to write a piano concerto over the past year, and writing for the superb Daniil Trifonov has been an inspiration.

Daniil rose to fame with the giant repertoire of his fellow Russians, but he’s since presented a huge variety of recordings in many styles. The title of his Grammy-winning album Transcendental is the perfect word to describe Daniil, whose delicate tone and old-soul phrasing stand out in a field packed more with technicians than musicians. I’ve written a piece that travels through eras, with a Baroque-inspired opening movement giving way to a more Romantic middle movement before ultimately exploding in a finale that could only have been written today.

The Philadelphia Orchestra premieres the work in January, with additional performances in New Jersey, Israel, and San Francisco Symphony in the spring (the latter also commissioned the work), and in Europe.

New Production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

The oracle of Apple has continued to fascinate over a decade after his early death. Yet being the charismatic visionary who uniquely understood the intersection of creativity and technology, Jobs was persecuted by an inability to treat people as little more than machines. Exploring this iconic figure, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs opened at Santa Fe Opera to such strong demand that extra performances were added, and the work traveled to several other cities before winning the Grammy in 2019.

Now the opera returns to at least a half-dozen cities in a brand new production under the direction Tomer Zukin. Opera houses in Austin, Atlanta, and Kansas City lead a growing list that now includes Opera Utah and Calgary Opera. The new production features a vibrant new set that zips us through the fast-paced opera’s many settings and times.

Bootlegger’s Break in Miami

Concert bands – orchestras without strings and tons brass, winds, and percussion – have continued to perform many of my works over the years. But it’s been only rare occasions when I’ve written specifically for this marvelous medium. One of the leading ensembles I’ve worked with over the years is the Frost Ensemble at the University of Miami (pictured, left)led by conductor Robert Carnachan, and I’m excited to be composing a lightning-fast opener to be premiered by the Frost this spring.

Bootlegger’s Break is a quicksilver opener driven by the soul of Lee Petty, a famous Prohibition-era getaway driver (his son Richard Petty channeled those skills into NASCAR). It has equal parts big-band-era energy and bluesy nods to Petty’s southern roots, with a great deal of inspiration coming from the big-band music that constantly emanates from my father’s man-cave. Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Glenn Gray: these masters of large ensembles are rarely heard today. It’s not often I get to write for many saxophones and horns, with a half-dozen percussionists backing them up: the ‘break’ of the title refers both to escapes and drum breaks).

Beyond these premieres, there are many exciting performances of earlier works, such as Liquid Interface – which will be given its UK premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner at Royal Festival Hall. With the world gradually opening back up to live music, it will be so exciting to attend many of these performances in so many parts of the world.