As a high schooler playing percussion and clarinet, Viet Cuong (b. 1990) was a self-described “band geek” who recalled how “the high school band room was where I found my place as a person.” Through his studies at the Peabody Conservatory, Curtis Institute and Princeton University, Cuong built on his passion for wind ensembles to become an accomplished composer of concert music in all forms, including orchestral works commissioned and performed by the New York Philharmonic, Albany Symphony and many other top ensembles. He wrote the following program note for this new work commissioned by Orpheus. 

Time and time again suggests recurrence—the quiet familiarity of something returning, never quite the same as before. A gesture resurfaces, a pattern reappears, and what once seemed fleeting gradually takes on new meaning through repetition and change.

In Time and Time Again, this sense of return unfolds through a network of musical echoes operating at several different scales. At times gestures seem to echo themselves, their notes repeating and softly tapering, their sounds lingering in the air. These moments ripple outward as other instruments take up the lines in imitative, syncopated counterpoint, creating overlapping chains of reflection across the ensemble. At a broader scale, entire sections of the piece return in transformed forms, revisiting earlier ideas from new vantage points.

The result is a musical landscape shaped by echoes both immediate and distant. The music continually moves forward while glancing back at its own reflections, allowing sounds, gestures, and entire passages to reappear in new forms, time and time again.

-Viet Cuong