Persist

Piano, violin, and cello

The combination of these three instruments has always fascinated me because they all have strings, but the piano always ends up sounding like the “odd one out,” so to speak. With Persist, I took this literally and crafted music in which the keyboard player gets “stuck” in a harmonic palette and rhythmic footprint that seems ignorant of and far away from what the other two instruments are doing.  The strings see this and intermittently try to shake the piano loose…but are only half successful.  The ecstatic moments in the work come in the episodes when they all find a common language which, while brief, is joyous and optimistic.