Sum of its Parts

ensemble 3.2.2.2, 2.2.1.1, timp+2, perc, harp, piano, strings

written fall 2018

duration 8 minutes

premiered Apr. 27, 2019, United University Church, Los Angeles, by Adam Karelin and the Concerto Chamber Orchestra

Winner in the 2019 Concerto Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores

3rd Place in the 2018 Metropolitan Youth Orchestra Composition Competition

All I knew about Sum of its Parts when I began to write was that it was going to be a piece for youth orchestra. As the piece grew, I realized that it was no longer just a piece for youth, but a piece about youth - mine, in particular.

As a child, I loved to build, and the simpler the raw materials, I thought, the better. My brother and I would spend countless hours together summoning wildly ambitious contraptions from the depths of our massive Lego bins. It was gleefully deceiving, the endless potential such small pieces contained, and it wasn’t long before we turned our attention toward other elements from which one could create universes - words on pages, pixels on screens, notes on staves.

Sum of its Parts is built around this idea of greater wholes emerging from simple parts. This is reflected horizontally as the piece weaves together a narrative out of a series of episodes, and also vertically, as each section reinterprets the piece’s title in its own unique fashion: gentle woodwind ostinati sum up to watery, pandiatonic textures; string melody and fanfare accompaniment craft broad, cinematic strokes; seemingly asynchronous harmonics and pitched percussion evoke a canvas of glinting stars; warm, languid brass lines curve in and around each other to form chorales. Throughout, the piece is suffused with an innocent exuberance, seeking to reclaim the joyous naivete of childhood creativity.