ALL ALONG (2024) for mixed octet and offstage piano

Instrumentation: clarinet in Bb, bassoon, horn in F, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, and offstage piano

Duration: ~16 minutes

Performance/Recording History:

• Premiered by Taig Egan, clarinet, Ruiqi Shi, bassoon, Brooks Wisniewski, horn, Abby Ko, violin I, Simon Hagopian-Rogers, violin II, Lily Jonsson, viola, Elliot Lippy, cello, Joe Weinberg, bass, Liam Cummins, offstage piano, Jonah Cohen, conductor, and Noah Godard, offstage conductor on April 15, 2024 at the Juilliard Composers Concert in Morse Hall at The Juilliard School in New York City, NY.

Program Notes:

“Live in the moment” is one of the most common pieces of advice given today. The lofty ideals of mindfulness and presence are highly appealing, to be sure, and we consider it undesirable to be too focused on the past or future. Yet is it truly in our nature to “live in the moment”? Do we have the capacity to act and think spontaneously and without regard to the past or the future? Or is everything we do merely a reaction to the situation at hand, our lived experiences, or the generations of collected knowledge bestowed upon us?

ALL ALONG is an exploration of the questions of presence and our relationship to the past and the future. The piece begins with a musical “Big Bang” of sorts, a barrage of sonic data which mirrors the overstimulating and seemingly incomprehensible nature of our daily lives. Slowly, the music begins to expand and distill itself as we draw closer to discovering its true identity. The true core of the piece is only revealed at the very end; perhaps it is distance from the real world that allows us to understand it. Perhaps what is true has been there all along - we only needed knowledge and experience to discover it.