A Finale for a Composer-in-Residence

Three years ago, Dan Visconti began as the Young American Composer in Residence for the California Symphony. This Sunday afternoon, their season, and his residency end with a concert that includes the premiere of his cello concerto called Tangle Eye, written for soloist Inbal Segev. The concert also includes Beethoven’s Corolian Overture, and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony.

There’s more information at the California Symphony website.

When he began his residency, he was commissioned to write three 10- to 12-minute works for orchestra only over the course of the three seasons. He expanded the parameters last year when he wanted to write Living Language, a guitar concerto for Jason Vieaux. “One of the things that I really liked about this project is that the orchestra was really receptive to me saying, ‘Hey, you know, I have this guitarist, I’m thinking of writing a concerto, and is there any way we could actually get this off the ground?’” He took good use of having the orchestra serve as his laboratory. “We tried a lot of very way-out orchestral techniques, and all kind of textures… so in this concerto for cellist Inbal Segev, it’s a lot more traditional in certain ways. It’s in three-four, the first movement is in B-flat Major…” Inspired by, but not quoting directly American folksongs, including ‘Tangle Eye Blues,’ ‘Shennandoah,’ and ‘Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair’. Visconti says: “This was my attempt at something kind of distilling a lot of the crazy ideas from the last three years, and putting them into maybe the simplest possible expression, instead of the wildest one.”