Symphony #7 was commissioned by the New England Philharmonic, was written in 2017, and premiered by the Philharmonic on April 27, 2019, conducted by Richard Pittman. Each of the four movements is a tone poem on one of the four elements.
The first movement written was Water, whose opening came to me in a dream. Of course, after writing down that opening, I realized I needed to lengthen it with an insertion. The music sort of depicts the path of a spring on a mountain trickling and then flowing into a stream and into a river and into the ocean. There are sparklies in the mallet percussion representing sunlight gleaning off the water.
II. is a tone poem about Air, III. is about Earth — which has a lot of piano-to-forte gestures on single notes — and IV. is about Fire.
The recording is from the premiere.
