Tommy Mesa, cello

Program Notes

Alleluia Olora is a one movement, ~8 minute work for solo cello capturing the space of emotions when a distant tragedy suddenly becomes personal: a catastrophe involving one’s own friends, family, neighborhood, and the current and future livelihoods of millions. Those moments when empathy for others is replaced by one’s own strong and innate feelings that arrive with fire and immediacy: fight for survival, fight for normalcy, fear of ends of lives and all that is unknown, and ultimately, an appeal towards faith in the better good of humanity. 

The work follows the sudden shifts in mood and understanding experienced by many in the United States in April of 2020, when a plague and its vast consequences were laid at our feet seemingly overnight. Many melodic motifs used in the work come from sounds I experienced while in quarantine in Manhattan: from the haunting, pitch-bend drones of ambulance sirens echoing off the canyon walls of block after block of apartment buildings under quarantine to the redeeming sounds of nature as songbirds crept out of the parks and onto rooftops and windowsills. 

A note on the title: Alleluia Olora is my second small work specifically for cello, the other being my first chamber work, Fantasia Olora for cello + piano, written in 2008.

Thank you to Tommy Mesa for being an incredible collaborator, and thank you to Tommy and Vera Wilson and Astral Artists for giving me this outlet to tell my perspective and experience of this difficult time. I hope that it gives its listeners even the smallest experience of catharsis and healing and hope.

More about Fantasia Olora

About the Artist

Thomas Mesa, Cuban-American cellist, has established himself as one of the most charismatic, innovative, and engaging performers of his generation.  He was the winner of the $50,000 First Prize in the 2016 Sphinx Competition and the Astral Artists 2017 National Auditions.  He has appeared as soloist at the Supreme Court of the United States on three occasions and with major orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, The Cleveland Orchestra, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Santa Barbara Symphony, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

 Highlights in the 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 Seasons include curating and performing chamber music programs with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, soloist with Sphinx Virtuosi touring at major venues across the U.S. with Jessie Montgomery’s Divided for solo cello and orchestra,  Andrea Casarrubios’s SEVEN for solo cello, and a 30-venue recital tour with duo partner and pianist, Ilya Yakushev.  These tours will include places such as Carnegie Hall, the MET Museum, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Colburn School of Music, Kohler Foundation, and many more.

As a recording artist, Thomas will be releasing two albums of new music for solo cello and cello/piano.  The first is called Division of Memory that will be released on October 9th, 2021.  The second is a duo album with Michelle Cann, piano soloist and faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music.  

Recently, Thomas was the featured cover story on Strings Magazine, September/October, 2020 

In the Fall of 2021, Thomas will be the cello professor at The Conservatory of Music at Purchase College (SUNY).

About the Composer

Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette, Ashley Bouder, NYCB soloist Peter Walker, and XAOC Contemporary Ballet’s Eryn Renee Young. Eero, a ballet commissioned by Access Contemporary Music and Open House New York, was written for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP), and “wide ranging, imaginative” (Portland Press Herald). 

Boyd is the 2021/2022 Peoria Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence, a position culminating in an entire concert of her works, including her violin concerto Sybil, her cantata Sheltering Voices, and a new work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Deborah Rutter, Michelle DeYoung, and Sirena Huang as soloists. The 2021/2022 season also includes the premiere of Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Christopher Dragon; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others. 

Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Roosevelt University Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, the JVL Festival Orchestra, the Texas State University Symphony, the Cremona International Academy Orchestra, the UW La Crosse Symphony, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, and the El Paso Youth Symphony. Her work has been presented by the Thalia and her Sisters concert series, the Moirae Ensemble, and Sandcastle New Music in New York City; Æpex Contemporary Music in Michigan; Juventas New Music, Collage New Music, and the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston; Cincinnati Soundbox, and others. Stephanie has worked with conductors such as Andrew Litton, Lina Gonzales, Earl Lee, Nathan Aspinall, Cliff Colnot, Gill Rose, Julian Benichou, Kristo Kondakci, and Kevin Fitzgerald.

stephanieannboyd.com