American composer Kevin Puts was born on January 3, 1972 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied composition and piano at the Eastman School of Music (BM and DMA) and Yale University (Master’s). His composition teachers include Samuel Adler, Jacob Druckman, David Lang, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, William Bolcom, and Bernard Rands. He taught at the University of Texas, Austin from 1997 to 2005. In 2006 he joined the faculty of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He studied at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts and has been associated with several of the most important summer music festivals, including Aspen and Cabrillo, and he has been composer-in-residence with the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas. He has an equally impressive number of awards and fellowships to his name and continues to receive commissions from prestigious artists and performing arts institutions. His opera Silent Night was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize following its 2011 premiere by Minnesota Opera The Deutsche Grammophon recording of his triple concerto composed for Time for Three, Contact, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Xian Zhang, conductor was awarded "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" at the 2023 Grammy® Awards. Mr. Puts was named Musical America's Composer of the Year in 2024. His Concerto for Orchestra was composed in 2023 to fulfill a joint commission from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Its first performance took place on January 21, 2023 with Stėphane Denève leading the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. It is scored for 3 flutes (piccolo), 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and celesta.

The composer provides the following program note to his Concerto for Orchestra:

Concerto for Orchestra grew out of my friendship with conductor Stéphane Denève. It is dedicated both to him and to the musicians of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, for whom I have developed great admiration since their first performance of my music in 2004. The creative entry point for me was the discovery of young Amanda Gorman’s beautiful poem “Hymn for the Hurting” written in response to the horrific school shooting—an occurrence now routine in our country—in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022. The music at the concerto’s opening—recalled briefly at various places throughout the piece—is my immediate musical reaction to it. The title of the second movement, “Caccia”, is a reference to the 14th century musical form depicting the hunt or the chase and flows directly from this opening hymn. It continues the opening movement’s focus on the various groups of instruments in the orchestra beginning with the oboes and punctuated at all times by the orchestra's three percussionists who play identical collections of six drums. “Music Box with Arietta”, by contrast, explores the gentler side of the percussion section, led here by cascading gestures played by the harp and celesta, giving way to a lyrical counterpoint of woodwinds. “Toccata” is a quick exchange between the strings, the winds, and the percussion. Eventually the brass section asserts itself, cutting across these exchanges with brash, angular lines. A brief refrain of the opening movement leads to a gentle “Siciliana” featuring nearly all instruments in the orchestra in lyrical ways, perhaps most prominently the piano. Another refrain introduces the final movement, another “Caccia”, this one containing a brief quotation from the Mozart opera which inspired it.

Program Note by David B. Levy/Kevin Puts ©2025/2026