PROGRAM NOTE

At the end of our freshman year, my cohorts, the oboists of Eastman’s Class of 2000, asked me to write a work for solo oboe. I obliged and wrote a short work in three movements: a prelude, an aria and a virtuosic finale, all built from a few isolated motives. Most prominently, I based the first movement on a double-dotted motive similarly found in the first movement of Benjamin Britten’s War Reqieum – a work I first performed in 1997. I am fortunate to have heard that masterpiece before Britten’s own works for solo oboe – an experience that could have made me forsake both Britten and the oboe.