EERO.
Opus. 61
Instrumentation: Bb Clarinet doubling Bass Clarinet + String Trio
Duration: 4 Minutes, One Movement
Commissioned By: Access Contemporary Music with Open House New York
Choreographer: Peter Walker
Scroll down for program note, recording, perusal score,
purchase options, and commissioner biography
PROGRAM NOTE.
This work is dear to my heart; in high school I drove my first car, a 1983 Studebaker Avanti, back and forth to youth orchestra rehearsals on the University of Michigan's North Campus every Sunday. In writing this piece for the commemoration of the grand opening of the TWA Hotel and witnessing the midcentury designs of Eero Saarinen come back to life, I learned that Raymond Loewy, the designer who created my Avanti, had helped with much of the industrial design of the interior of the terminal. And in taking Saarinen's building's shape, tracing it on score paper, and working with that to create a cohesive structure for my own art that exists not on a canvas of public space but in the canvas of a public audience's temporal experience, I realized that this piece was meant to more than anything capture the experience of iconic TWA luxury and the adrenaline and exhilaration that comes from the moment of being in a plane as it takes off. As I neared the end of writing this piece, I learned of the place where Saarinen had passed away in 1961: in Ann Arbor, Michigan, overseeing his latest project, a building for a university music school that would some decades in the future hold those very same youth orchestra rehearsals that I attended.
Details // Concert Prep
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PDF Score + Part(s) sent via email within 2-3 business days. I’m excited to connect with you!
Purchase is for one copy only, just for you! Please don’t share or else I’ll be sad when I see it in my google alerts ; - )
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I want to meet you! Purchase of this pdf in the 23/24 season comes with a 30 min zoom session, if you’d appreciate that during your rehearsal process. You’ll receive scheduling instructions in the delivery email with your music.
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I’m excited to help promote your concert(s) on social media and include it on the website!
If you already have a concert date in mind, you’ll receive instructions on sending me concert info in the delivery email with your music.
recording.
about the commission.
THE MUSIC: Access Contemporary Music partnered with Open House New York in June 2019 to present four commissioned pieces (by Anthony R. Green, Ed Windels, Seth Boustead, and Stephanie Ann Boyd) inspired by the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Center, formerly the Flight Center, at JFK Airport. The pieces were performed in the building as part of OHNY’s annual gala, one of them with dancers from the New York City Ballet. It was a magical evening.
THE HOTEL: MCR and MORSE Development have reignited the magic of Eero Saarinen’s landmark 1962 TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport, restoring and reimagining it as a first-class hotel. At the center of the hotel is Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA Flight Center, where restaurants, bars and retail outlets have taken flight. Two hotel wings, designed to reflect and defer to the landmark TWA Flight Center, sit behind the historic building and contain 512 guestrooms with views of JFK’s runways and the TWA Flight Center.
ACCESS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: We integrate musical creativity into everyday life through high-quality concerts of the music of living composers, by teaching creativity and an appreciation for musical creativity in our storefront music schools, and through innovative commissioning projects with composers worldwide. We are changing the image of classical music and presenting it as a living tradition – not dead European men in wigs. When classical music is seen as thriving and relevant, audiences grow. ACM has developed a strategy to address both of these challenges and revitalize classical music:
Go where the people are, make contemporary music visible.
Raise musical literacy in general. There are many extremely intelligent individuals who don’t know basic things about music. This has to change.
Humanize the composers who create the music. Show off the diverse elements of today’s classical music and change the perception about who can compose and perform classical music. We have to widen the definition of classical music to include the diverse faces of today.
All of ACM’s programs have been created to serve one or more of these three strategic elements, from our ACM School of Music, to the Thirsty Ears classical music street festival to Sound of Silent Film, Open House and more.
OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK: Open House New York provides broad audiences with unparalleled access to the extraordinary architecture of New York and to the people who help design, build, and preserve the city.
Through year-round programs and the annual OHNY Weekend, Open House New York celebrates the best examples of design and planning throughout the five boroughs, from historic to contemporary, and helps foster a more informed conversation about how architecture and urban design sustain New York as a vibrant place to live, work, and learn. Open House New York is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Open House New York was founded by Scott Lauer in 2001 to engage New Yorkers in the city’s architecture, public space, and the future of urban life.
With the help of a dedicated board and volunteers, OHNY became an important platform for celebrating New York at a critical moment in its history. Following the events of September 11, when much of the city was closing itself off through increased security measures, OHNY offered a countervailing force, one that advocated for openness and access as key components of an enlightened and vibrant civic life.
The first Open House New York Weekend was held in 2003 as part of the city’s first Architecture Week. With the help of 300 volunteers, that event included 84 sites in all five boroughs.
Since the inaugural year, the event has grown exponentially, increasing its outreach and audience participation; the number of sites, talks and tours; and developing additional thematic and interpretive programming. OHNY Weekend now includes more than 275 participating sites and offering 1,300 tours with an estimated 85,000 visitors and more than 1,400 registered volunteers.
In addition to OHNY Weekend, Open House New York organizes year-round programs that extend the conversation that begins during the two days of the Weekend. Programs include Projects in Planning, an ongoing series of presentations that explore the design and development of major new projects in the early stages of their development; Making Place, an annual event that opens a range of architecturally and culturally significant sites in one neighborhood to look at neighborhoods in the midst of change; and the Urban Systems Series, year-long thematic series that explore important issues in New York City’s built environment, from manufacturing, to food, to waste. Open House New York’s year-round programs are a significant platform for fostering discussion about how the city might take shape in the years ahead, and address issues including planning, preservation, infrastructure, and contemporary design.
CHOREOGRAPHER biography.
Peter Walker is from Fort Myers, Florida, where he began his early dance training at age eight with teacher Judy Murray in tap dance and the next year at the Gulfshore Ballet with Melinda Roy. Mr. Walker began studying at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of the New York City Ballet, during the 2006 and 2007 summer courses and enrolled as a full-time student in the winter of 2007. In the spring of 2011, Mr. Walker became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet in Fall 2012. He was promoted to soloist in October 2018. Mr. Walker’s first work for the Company, ten in seven, premiered at NYCB’s Fall 2016 Gala. His second work, dance odyssey, premiered in Winter 2018.