Piano Concerto No. 1 ‘Debra’s Recital’ – III. “The Real Job” (2017)

Written for piano and orchestra. Commissioned and Pete Nowlen and the Rancho Cordova Civic Light Orchestra, composed in 2017.

This is the third and final movement of my piano concerto which was commissioned and premiered by Pete Nowlen and the Rancho Cordova Civic Light Orchestra (now the Symphony d’Oro). This recording is from the first performance of this piece on March 18th, 2017, and they gave an encore performance later that year in October.

The piece is dedicated to my piano teacher, Debra Miller, who passed away in 2011 while I was in college. She was my first music teacher from age 6 to high school. An incredibly supportive teacher, she would give moving and poetic speeches during our recitals, and the titles for the movements come from these speeches. The full title for this movement is, “The Real Job Is About Having the Guts to Get up Here and Show Everybody Else Something That You Created–Something That You’re Proud Of.”

The movement oscillates between two main themes. The first theme, which is an ever unfurling sixteenth note line, is introduced by the piano. The piano then hands the baton to the orchestra, which states the second theme. These trade back and forth, starting in D flat major, then traveling to E major, and B major, all in varying moods. The piece then releases into a long piano cadenza, for which I manipulated the recording of the aforementioned speech by changing the pitch and speed. I layered these, and then transcribed their relative pitches. I mimic these pitches on the piano, which builds to the final statement of the second theme.

The piece is scored for solo piano, violins, violas, cellos, double basses, 2 flutes , 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 french horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and synthesizer.