Ein(e) Düsseldorfer Sinfonie: Im Sommer, 2024

Written in 2024 for piano with ensemble (45 minutes)

Recording Coming Soon!

Before performing the piece, I invited everyone at the show to participate – musicians and non-musicians alike, and I wrote this statement, which was read every time I performed the piece: “It is a symphony: there are 4 movements. It’s about 45 minutes long. It could be a ballet: we have dancers. It could be a play: we have actors. You’ll find in the text, several references to bodies and motion. I’m also struck that this is in some way also a concerto: I’m the only one on stage, you don’t know what is going to happen, and you will find contradictions in the text and perhaps you will look to me to solve them… perhaps I won’t be very useful in this way. At the same time, you’ll find reference to others and my friends. It’s autobiographical in a way, somehow self-conscious. I remember the words of two artists, Anna Shteynshleyger and Melissa Shook, who I will quote now by mixing their words together: ‘to prove I exist, I want to make a work that is autobiographical, but I don’t want to talk about myself. I would always become angry with the fiction of myself; feel like distance between what I really wanted to say and what I did say’. I choose not to explain this piece any further that what I just said, so take the music with you, read it again, find things in it that I didn’t know was there. I’ll be reading this same text every time we do this piece. Everything will be fine regardless.”