Tony Said to Keep the Faith (2025)

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This piece is a tale of two Tonys. Pianist Marcantonio Barone has been an important teacher and mentor in my life. He sent me a recording of his playing of some of Brahms’ late solo piano music some years ago, and I was struck by the beauty of his playing and the intricate musical and emotional words Brahms creates. As I worked on this piece, I kept returning to a descending third idea evocative of some of Brahms’ late piano music. It made me think of Tony Barone.

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The second Tony the title references is Anthony Leach, a choir director I sang under while an undergrad at Penn State University. He led a choir focused on music of the African-American choral tradition. He too was an important mentor in my life. He died recently, and I learned of his passing as I worked on this piece. His death brought to memory many of the songs we sang together in the choir. Two of them, “Walk Together Children” and “O Magnify” find their way into this piece in fragmented and slightly altered form.

 

These disparate musical worlds are connected through the use of rotational arrays generated from the descending third material.

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The work was premiered by pianist Conrad Tao at the New Music on the Point September 2025 Retreat.