Suite for Cello (2010)
duration: ca 18'

1. Canto
2. Allemande
3. Sarabande
4. Interlude
5. Lamentation
6. Gigue

commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Committee

first performance: May 7, 2011 - Hillary Smith, cello - Peninsula Center Library in Palos Verdes, CA

program note:
My intent upon writing this piece was to pay tribute to the great cello composers and incorporate components from the traditional dance suites of the Baroque and Renaissance eras while working in an idiom that was still distinctly my own. Suite for Cello is an amalgam of these old and new elements, with influences from several main sources. I was directly inspired to write this piece after hearing the Suite for Cello Op. 72 by Benjamin Britten. I decided to pay homage to his suite by starting mine also with a movement titled "Canto" and quoting Britten within it (this same quote returns in the "Lamentation"). Throughout the piece there are also allusions to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and Elgar's Cello Concerto.

Suite for Cello was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Committee and written for the great cellist and my lifelong friend Hillary Smith.