Being in Life, reflects the idea that we are all walking down our individual life paths, intersecting and interacting in various ways.

This piece is dedicated to the memory of Raphael Anthony Warshal Yell who died suddenly and tragically just short of his 3^rd birthday. I spent time with this delightful little boy just a week before his death in March of 2018 and had come to believe that he was a musical genius. I could tell that he was listening to music – from Mozart to reggae and even my “modern” music — with an intention of complete understanding. He was processing the structure of the music while being totally immersed in the glory of the sound. He may have been a child, but he was already a sophisticated and discerning listener. In tribute to him, I decided to write a joyful piece that would “knock his socks off” – enchant his young ears and fill him with amazement. If I started to veer into the sadness of his death, I stopped myself and changed course. I hope that this work will appeal to the “child” in all of us.

The first movement explores the sound world of the Alpenhorn – whose harmonic structure is dependent on the fact that the Alpenhorn is in F# with only the pitches of that harmonic series available. I selected the specifically pitched singing bowls to work with this. The second movement is a setting of a Hindustani “bandish” (prayer melody), Aiso Mahagyani Konahay in Raag, Bilaskhani Todi. The melody is one that I learned while studying Hindustani music in India with my guru, Pandit Kedar Narayan Bodas. When I sang it for Ann, she insisted that it become part of her concerto. I have given it a fairly Western setting, much in the tradition of composers setting a folk tune. The third movement, “The Hunt,” has a playful program: starting out at a fast pace, the dogs and riders are chasing a fox but they lose him when they get ensnarled in a thicket. Then the fox (now the Alpenhorn) emerges triumphant, thumbing his nose at the hunters and dogs as he gets away.

Ann Ellsworth and I collaborated closely on Being in Life and the give and take in developing ideas has been rich and rewarding. It was Ann’s idea to include the Alpenhorn (about which I knew little) and we both wanted to combine the horns with Tibetan singing bowls, which I have been collecting and using in my compositions for almost two decades.  We thought that strings would be the best third element and thus the concept for the orchestration was born. Throughout the work, and especially in the 2nd movement, the concertmaster is featured as soloist.

Early on we started thinking about arranging the middle movement for horn trio, especially because the piece featured the concert master as soloist. The violin part was already there! With the onslaught of Covid-19 and the need to write for smaller groups of musicians, I decided that the entire concerto would work as a trio for horn/Alphorn, violin and piano. Since the bowls are specifically pitched and not so easy to find, I decided to make the trio version with an “optional” bowl part to be performed by 1 percussionist, making it a quartet. For the most part, the bowl part has been absorbed into the violin and piano parts. If the bowls are included, there are some ossia sections where the piano does not play. I took great liberty with the piano part, adding new counterpoints and pianistic figuration. I am indebted to Italian hornist, Marco Venturi, who helped me adapt the Alphorn part for Natural Horn (Corno da caccia).

Being in Life was commissioned for the Northwest Philharmonia, Julia Tai conductor, and premiered in Seattle in October, 2019. The trio version was premiered on the International Horn Society’s virtual conference in summer of 2021 with Ann playing horn and natural horn, Lily Holgate, violin, and Renate Rholfing, piano. The quartet version was premiered on the Stony Brook Premiers in NYC in November 2021 with Ann playing horn and Alphorn, Philip Setzer, violin, Miki Aoki, piano, and John Ling, Tibetan singing bowls.