Thoughts and Riddles

Celebrated composer Augusta Read Thomas curates a program that blends her own music with that of longtime friends of the OSL and emerging composers she has mentored, in honor of our 50th anniversary. OSL’s history of close collaboration with today’s most important composers is represented by For Marianne, a work for solo flute by Joan Tower who served as OSL’s Composer in Residence for a decade (1999–2009). Commissioned and premiered in 2010, the work honors the orchestra’s co-founder and president Marianne Lockwood. Flute also features prominently in the nocturnal tapestry of Night Thoughts by Chen Yi, the award-winning Chinese-American composer whose music has long been a part of OSL’s repertoire.  The adaptable nature of instrumentation for chamber music is evident in Thomas’s Bebop Riddle V. Originally composed for solo marimba, the energetic, dance-like Bebop Riddle has since been transformed in variations for different instruments, here flute and clarinet. For this delightful “sampler” of a program, Thomas has also selected her piano trio,  …a circle around the sun, and Toft Serenade for violin and piano. As Mentor Composer for the OSL’s DeGaetano Composer Institute, Thomas advises promising composers such as Paul Novak in the development and performance of new works. His Entwining is performed along with Grey Fireworks by another young composer to watch, Tyson Gholston Davis.