Something remarkable happened this month: a new symphonic piece was actually premiered. Under the baton of Maestra Marin Alsop, the São Paulo Symphony gave the world premiere of Undistant, a lyrical response to the social distancing of the Covid era.
The piece’s life began with a conversation last May between me and Marin, who has brought many pieces of mine to orchestras around the world. She asked if I’d compose something reflective and hopeful, a piece that could celebrate the necessity of true human connection.
Undistant follows a journey of past, present, and future: beginning with the distancing we’ve experienced over the past nine months, it looks towards the return of human contact in the coming year. Scored for chamber orchestra and electronics, the piece opens with the cold sound of digital stutters from communication platforms (Zoom and Skype), then slowly warms up with the bloom of a long melody that shares the first three notes with “Ode to Joy.” (The isolation of Covid seems reminiscent of the isolation of Beethoven’s deafness, and his most famous tune is the ultimate hymn to human fellowship.)
To vividly illustrate the concept of distancing, the piece scatters several of the musicians around the hall: a group of woodwinds in the left balcony, some brass in the right, and the strings and percussion onstage. As the orchestras emerges in a haze of digital static, these three ensembles drift closer and closer together. The work culminates in an ecstatically lyricism, with the digital world (electronics) disappearing.
The very fact that I had to hear the premiere online, sitting in California, enhanced the basic thematic of the piece. Traveling to Brazil was unfortunately out of the question given all the restrictions, but I found the experience of tuning in quite moving. In fact, several years ago the São Paulo Symphony gave the Brazilian premiere of another work of mine exploring distance: Mass Transmission, a choral work, sets transcripts of families speaking over the first long-distance radio signals.
The past year has been especially challenging for orchestras, a medium that is all about people coming together. As a symphonist, I continue to be fascinated by the way orchestras allow so many people to collaborate in real time – but that defining characteristic has kept many orchestras shuttered during Covid. But recent advances in medicine and politics offer real hope in the inevitable return of live music, and that hope is what Undistant is all about.