As I write this I am in the midst of cleaning up the score for a recently completed work for solo cello, titled You are missing here. Of all the instruments for which I have an affinity, the cello is the one dearest to me, as it has been my primary instrument since the age of 11. Had I not broken my arm in high school, which lead to the suggestion of my orchestra director that I should pursue composition, I would have probably continued on my path toward becoming a professional orchestral player. But, having broken my arm in two places, playing the cello was never quite the same. Though I managed to continue to perform after my arm healed I never regained the level of comfortability I once had on the instrument. A prospect that at the time was heartbreaking.
Like most pieces I write, You are missing here. is not simply drawn from a single impetus, but is a confluence of strands as the piece was conceived during a long period of time in which the person most dear to me, my fiancée, was absent for long stretches of time due to her own exciting artistic pursuits. In her absence, I found myself dusting off my cello and re-familiarizing myself with the instrument. After brushing up on solo works that I had once played, works by Hindemith, Rachmaninov, and, of course, Bach, I began to view my time playing on the instrument from a creative guise. I started to communicate not just a feeling of solitary melancholy in her absence, but also capturing moments of joy and exhilaration that I wished to capture and share after the fact, like my trip to St. Petersburg that she unfortunately couldn’t join.
In effect, the piece became a deeply personal journal in which I was conveying a myriad of emotional states through the more visceral vantage of performer, rather than my more typically cerebral role of composer. In the absence of one partner, I became reacquainted with another and wrote a piece about— what else?... the absence of my other.
