Page 138 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

August 2 & 3 PROGRAM NOTES

Missy Mazzoli

Violin Concerto, “Procession”

AT A GLANCE

Born: 1980
Date of Composition: 2021
Instrumentation: Violin Concerto,
“Procession,” is scored for
nd
2 flutes (2 doubling piccolo),
2 oboes, 2 clarinets (2 doubling
nd
bass clarinet), 2 bassoons
(2 doubling contrabassoon),
nd
4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones,
tuba, percussion, harp, strings
and solo violin.
We tend to think of a composer’s
career as proceeding along a
fairly straight line. Composer
studies at school X with teacher Y;
composer builds reputation slowly
piece by piece; composer
becomes established, maybe
winds up teaching composition in
a major school of music. But that’s
not the case with many of today’s
composers, who in a fragmented
and rapidly evolving profession
must virtually invent their own Missy Mazzoli — Marylene May
careers from the ground up.
Missy Mazzoli’s career has been
no line but an intricate webbing
that originates from her women are but a modest trained as a death doula in order
encompassing interests in, well, presence, either on the faculty or to help people through that most
just about everything. Some amongst the students. critical of life’s transitions.
of that is intrinsic to her own Mazzoli is not one to refrain from Her Violin Concerto, “Procession,”
nature, some of it is due to the action. Honoring the powerful dates from the years of the
requirements of today’s profession, influence of composer Meredith pandemic, when Mazzoli, like all of
and some of it relates to the Monk, she and her colleague us, was in seclusion. Unlike all of
challenge of being a female Ellen Reid founded the Luna us, she was on a Swedish island,
composer in a field that even after Composition Lab to mentor young contemplating the mysteries of
all this time remains mostly male. female composers. Their strategy healing and the casting-off of
That’s not to say there hasn’t been is working. That is only one evil spirits. The concerto is in five
progress; there most definitely element of a much larger collage; movements, each a meditation on
has. Nonetheless, a look at the Missy Mazzoli is a composer, healing spells. She tells us about
composition departments of our keyboardist, educator, advocate each movement:
major conservatories reveals that and more, including having

136 Grand Teton Music Festival Season 63