Through the Looking Glass (2008), by Jess Langston Turner (b. 1983)

Through the Looking Glass is composed to be a concert opener, bringing the audience into the musical world created by the concert they are about to hear. In this way, this piece acts in a similar manner to the looking glass through which Alice was able to gain access to her wonderland. The entire three minutes of the piece consists of only five different pitches which are constantly reconfigured into running passages, ostinati, and thrilling fanfares. The composer explains, "When I began composing Through the Looking Glass I knew that I wanted to write a piece that was fantastical in nature -- a piece that would transport us into an imaginary land where anything is possible. I chose the title Through the Looking Glass because just as Alice's doorway to Wonderland was her "looking glass," this fanfare is a doorway to a world of musical landscapes." "The piece is constructed of two different elements: a pervasive rhythmic pattern and an entire pitch vocabulary of only five different notes that are arranged in many different ways -- sometimes in long angular lines and other times in massive blocks of sound. Underneath all of this is the driving rhythmic impetus that propels the piece forward. These combined elements are meant to convey the imagery of colorful and fantastical shapes and images hurtling past the listener as he or she is transported to a new musical world where anything is possible."

Burn: Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Ensemble (2022), by Peter Meechan (b. 1980)
Keith Koons, Clarinet

Written for British clarinetist Linda Merrick, Burn was premiered by Linda in March, accompanied by Sheffield University Wind Orchestra (SUWO) conducted by Tony Houghton. The initial unaccompanied passage that opens the work was written during 2011’s “Arab Spring”, which dominated news reports of the time. The haunting soundtrack to these newscasts (which were a strange cocktail of devastating, uplifting, angry, mournful, rallying and peaceful) was the calls to prayer. There was no attempt whilst writing Burn (a title inspired by region’s climate) to directly imitate these calls to prayer, but certainly they had an impact on the opening passage of the work, and therefore the whole piece.

Shenandoah (2019), by Omar Thomas (b. 1982)

Shenandoah is one of America’s best known and most beloved folk songs. Originally a river song detailing the lives and journeys of fur traders canoeing down the Missouri River, the symbolism of this culturally-significant melody has been expanded to include its geographic namesake – an area of the eastern United States that encompasses West Virginia and a good portion of the western part of Virginia. Composer, Omar Thomas, explained how he’d asked himself, after hearing so many versions of this iconic and historic song, how he might set it differently? “I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and before I realized it, I had composed and assembled just about all of this arrangement in my head by assigning bass notes to the melody and filling in the harmony in my head afterwards.” This arrangement recalls the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley, not bathed in golden sunlight, but blanketed by low-hanging clouds and experiencing intermittent periods of heavy rainfall. There are a few musical moments where the sun attempts to pierce through the clouds, but ultimately the rains win out. This arrangement of Shenandoah is at times mysterious, somewhat ominous, constantly introspective, and deeply soulful.

There Are No Words (2015), by Jim Stephenson (b. 1969)

Composer, Jim Stephenson, originally wrote there are no words as a chamber piece, in response to the Charleston, South Carolina shooting on June 17, 2015, in which a which a white supremacist took the lives of nine black worshippers at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Mother Emmanuel AME). Stephenson constructed the piece by relying heavily on the number nine, representing the victims of the tragedy. He names each of them in the score – “Dedicated to Clementa, Sharonda, Myra, Tywanza, Ethel, Cynthia, Daniel, DePayne, and Susie” – and constructs a short, tonal song from their names that provides important melodic material for the piece. He also uses a nine-note sequence throughout, calling for up to nine sets of chimes to be placed around the performance hall, to great climactic effect.