Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano: A Composer’s Reflection

Yesterday I posted some resurrected audio from my college senior recital in 2005—twenty years ago.

Today I am posting the final piece from that recital, my own composition, simply titled “Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano.” I had dabbled with composition a bit before then. In 1999 (when I was just sixteen years old), I wrote a piece for jazz octet that was performed at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. It combined a complex written-out score, as well as lots of free improvisation. Then, at CalArts in the early 2000s, I studied composition with several faculty, including one-on-one work with Art Jarvinen, who was doing some really interesting post-modern surfer-rock-inspired contemporary classical composition.

I dropped out of CalArts after one year and ended up getting a liberal arts college degree instead, and years passed before I tried composing again. The “Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano” was my return to form. I wrote the violin and cello pieces specifically for my friends to play; for example, I knew that the violinist could play both violin and piano, and so in the second part of the piece you hear her put down her violin and join me on the piano for several minutes of four-handed piano performance.

Listening back now, I hear lots of musical influences in this piece. I hear Music for Airports in the opening section. In the four-hands piano section, I hear bits of Kid A. I even hear Stephen Sondheim in the melodious third part. And I hear Steve Reich throughout; he has long been one of my favorite composers.

I would love to get back into composing classical music. What does it even mean to compose classically? How is something new “classical”?