Parts available for hire—contact marcus.maroney@gmail.com.

CONCERTO FOR CHAMBER ORCHESTRA was commissioned by River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) for its 11th season, “Side by Side.” In discussing the commission with Alecia Lawyer (founder, artistic director, and principal oboist of ROCO), she expressed great fondness for the second movement of Béla Bartók’s iconic Concerto for Orchestra, and asked if I might consider using it as inspiration. Bartók presents the wind instruments of the orchestra in pairs in that movement, and, in the first movement of my Concerto (“Epigraph”), I follow suit, although the musical content is otherwise quite different. The second movement (“Variations”) presents a simple theme in the winds that I mine for potential twists and turns, the stately-minuet gradually accelerating into a stomping scherzo. The driven finale (“Ostinato”) features a persistent one-measure rhythmic idea that I hope generates momentum and excitement toward the end of the work.

 CONCERTO FOR CHAMBER ORCHESTRA is dedicated to my husband, Michael J. Muña, who, once upon a time, spent countless hours mastering the opening bassoon passage of Bartók’s masterwork.