Black Elm

There is a particular clarity that comes from height. As a child, I preferred being above the world rather than inside it as my elevated retreat felt like the only place where things made sense. Black Elm begins there, high above the earth, gazing longingly below, and follows an ultimately redemptive descent into full belonging. That descent is expressed most viscerally through the cello as the work moves toward its center, the writing draws increasingly toward the physical materiality of the instrument as the resonance of its wood and the deep chest tones that seem to rise from the earth itself. The cello, carved from a tree, becomes a reminder that it and we are of this world rather than apart from it. That recognition establishes the emotional core of the piece. It is a feeling of redemption. Of solace. Of finally arriving somewhere.