strings

Composer's note: Marfantasie takes its name from the tiny American Western town of Marfa, which is home to the Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd’s collection of conceptual art, both his own and of like-minded artists. It is a strange conflation of cowboy culture and the avant-garde. In celebration of this incongruous American landscape, both natural and cultural, the two movements: 1) the vast seemingly empty---though actually fantastically active---desert landscape, and 2) the succession of seemingly similar---yet highly detailed, crafted, and varied--- basic forms that make up Judd’s art.

A consortium of orchestras, including The Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra, the Salt Lake Symphony, the Boise Philharmonic, the Mansfield Symphony and the University of Utah Philharmonia have commissioned the Schumann Trilogy to celebrate the bicentennial of Robert Schumann’s birth in 2010.  The trilogy was premiered at the REDCAT Theater in Los Angeles by the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra, Peter Askim, Music Director on May 8th, 2010.  It is comprised of three pieces -- Figments and Fragments, Cool Night and Genealogie -- which can be performed together or separately.