I started the Trio for Oboe, Cello and Piano in 2022 after a visit to Italy where I had made friends with a few musicians (a cellist and a pianist), and simply wanted to write something to play with them. Gradually, the piece started to turn into much more than that…

The first movement, ‘Chanson,’ is very much an homage to my love of twentieth-century French music. Notably, two of my favorite composers, Lili Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, are ever present in my musical language. Additionally, I really wanted to lean into the melodic and soloistic capabilities of the oboe and cello. So, this movement begins with very vocal lines for the solo voices in an almost celebration of friendship and the beauty of human connection, but at some point it turns dark. Basically, I was messing around with some harmonies when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it just hit me in a way. I, as many of us do, turned to music when I didn’t know how to feel. The harmonic language of the second movement was written that week, even though I had yet to finish the first movement and had only a few ideas for the third at the time.

The intent behind the music changed for me at this point to reflect a broader view of us: humanity at its lowest, and at its highest. Thus the title of the second movement, ‘Hymn to a Better World.’ When feeling powerlessness, it can seem like we are reaching and never landing. Musically, this is represented through a trio-wide leitmotif of sorts in groupings of three notes: a large, upward leap, followed by a single step, with frequently no down beat resolution. In it all, there are visions of what a better world could be, but the music relentlessly pulls us back to complication. I thought a lot about the use of the word “to” vs. “for” in that title. Without getting too nihilistic, it became for me a musical language of apology; a recognition of just how much we have collectively messed things up despite all the beauty around and in us. The hope is in being honest about our failings so that others may learn from our mistakes, the fear is that too many of us are unwilling to do the self-reflection necessary to see our culpability in the problems of our world. And, to me, part of that solution is in building community, which is what the last movement, ‘Burlesque-Extatique,’ is all about.

Where the second movement is expressing our yearning to move beyond our separateness, the third movement is expressing our togetherness. At times, over-the-top exuberance is the point; in the last ten bars of this almost folk-dance inspired party I have literally instructed the performers to play “without any reservation, with reckless abandon.” This instruction is two-fold for me. Firstly, my belief is that the often conservative nature of our culture is rooted in trauma, hierarchical thinking, and chauvinistic control masquerading as “restraint” and class: work more, be quiet, be less. So, the joy being expressed at the end is all about breaking the often self-imposed bonds of oppression resulting in the thrill of true freedom; self-expression we can only achieve when we allow ourselves to see the light in each other, and the reality that we are a shared humanity. Secondly, it is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek response toward many of my classical musician colleagues who, honestly, obsess overmuch with control to the degree that it becomes a religion of exclusion . . . (they probably shouldn’t play my music – LOL).