The Same River Twice was written for Del Sol Quartet’s Joy Project.  During the pandemic, being locked out of concert halls and yearning for a way to give back to our entrenched community, the quartet commissioned many new pieces expressing joy.  This music was to be played outside on the street near cafes, in dog parks, in front of abandoned movie theaters and in unusual settings where people could gather safely and listen.  We wound up bringing this piece on a whitewater rafting trip down the Yampa River in CO & UT and shared it with some friends who were going to be playing on the Colorado River further downstream, hence the name.

Elena Kats-Chernin was born in 1957 in the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent and studied composition in Moscow, piano and composition in New South Wales, Australia, and composition in West Germany with Helmut Lachenmann. While in Europe she became active in theatre and ballet, composing for state theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg and Bochum. Her music attracted the attention of the Ensemble Moderne, and in 1993 they premiered her extraordinary work, “Clocks,” which has been performed on several continents. Since her return to Australia in 1994, Elena Kats-Chernin has become one of the country’s leading composers having written several operas, a ballet, two piano concertos and many other works.  Her brilliantly scored, energetic and often propulsive music has been choreographed by dance makers around the world.  Kats-Chernin was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in January 2019 "for distinguished service to the performing arts, particularly to music, as an orchestral, operatic and chamber music composer."