Composed 2011; 7 minutes

Violinist-composer Kip Jones wrote Three Views of a Mountain in 2011 as a concerto for violin and double bass—the most distant relatives in the string family—set against string orchestra. The opening movement launches the journey. Jones imagines the two soloists as “a speeding train,” racing together and finding common ground while the orchestra hurls dense harmonic blocks into their path. The music becomes a study in permutations: stark ideas twisted, repeated, and reshaped in clear, almost playful transformations. 

For Jones the movement captures a state of anticipation—the nervous energy before experience fully unfolds. The violin and bass push forward in restless dialogue, sometimes colliding, sometimes aligning, as if testing the landscape ahead. The result is lean, kinetic music, driven by momentum and the thrill of setting out toward an unknown summit.