OK, Goodbye.

This piece for flute, viola d'amore and chamber orchestra is a result of a commission from ROCO for Christina Jennings and Matthew Dane, to whom the work dedicated.

I strove to create a work that celebrates the color of the two solo instruments, each unique. I envisioned the piece in the tradition of the single-movement concertante works that used to be popular projects for composers, often standing as counterparts to the same composers' highly-virtuosic, multi-movement concertos proper. Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Ernest Chausson's Poéme come immediately to mind. While still providing ample opportunity for the soloists to show off their technical prowess, these pieces focus more on the beauty of the instruments and elegant, often organic structural unfolding. This was my aim here.

As a composer, I often turn to poetry for inspiration, even when writing a work without words. A poem often triggers my creativity after a long period of struggle insecurity about where to begin. In the case of this work, I encountered the catalyzing words in Summer 2019. On August 18, a ceremony was held in Borgarfjörður, Iceland to memorialize the loss of Okjökull (the Ok glacier), which, in 2014, had shrunk to a point where it no longer qualified as a glacier. 50 people attended the ceremony, and a humble copper plaque was installed where the glacier once existed. It is inscribed with a dedication by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, which reads in English:

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.
In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done.
Only you know if we did it.