Program Note: Being from Danbury, CT, the legacy of Charles Ives has loomed over me for the last several years as I have tried to find my own voice as a composer. This piece is my first confrontation with that looming legacy. I titled the piece Echo in Rogers Park because Charles Ives’ house is located in Rogers Park in Danbury.

Charles Ives was famous for quoting American folk tunes in his works, often quoting two at once and pitting them against each other in two different keys at the same time. It seemed fitting in this piece to recall this type of quotation. The first movement is a theme and variations using my own musical material, which is meant to stylistically evoke Ives in its earthy, but lush quality. The piano begins the movement playing a series of minor thirds. The main thematic material, first presented in the violin, grows out of this idea. The movement is essentially a theme and variations as the second half of it is a high-energy rhythmic section that culminates in a cadenza-like passage on the violin before a return to the slower tempo. The second movement quotes Ives’ work Songs My Mother Taught Me. Originally scored for soprano and piano, the song uses the following text written by Alfred Heyduk:

Songs my mother taught me in the days long vanished,

Seldom from her eyelids were the tear drops banished.

Now I teach my children each melodious measure;

Often tears are flowing from my memory’s treasure.

I found this poem and Ives’ setting of it to be particularly moving. Although there are of course no lyrics in this version, the violin plays the melody from Ives’ song in the quote. The second movement begins with a slow buildup, which is based on material from the first movement and from Ives’ song. The buildup culminates in a violin cadenza that gives way to the Ives quote. The quote culminates in a fusion of Ives’ song and my own material, much in the way he quoted folk tunes in his music. The movement drifts off with interjections of my material and Ives’ over a bed of minor thirds, meant to evoke the beginning of the first movement.

Premiere: Stefani Collins and Ben Laude in April 2013, subsequent performance by Julia Choi and Ben Laude.