for string orchestra (high school grade 4)
duration: 6′
Commissioned and premiered by the Kingwood Park High School Chamber Orchestra

Program notes

Inspired by the creativity of impressionist Claude Monet’s work in his Haystacks series held at the Art Institute of Chicago, Shades of Vermilion exposes the musical subject, a melody, to three different environments. It begins in a chromatic, dissonant medium, before traveling to a slow, plucked lyrical section. The energy of the first environment comes back with shimmering strings, cascading onto a breakthrough into the melody’s most organic form, a twelve-bar blues, where it triumphantly rests until the end.

This work was commissioned by the Kingwood Park High School Chamber Orchestra, and premiered on May 16th 2019, in Kingwood, TX.