Performances: (8/12/06): “The Trio has had a wonderful “life” so far. KLR has performed it in many places on tour including some prestigious places like Tanglewood at the Sejii Ozawa Shed, the Y (NYC), Bard, the Kennedy Center, Merlin, Napa Valley. They plan to take it to Europe next year!~ And all the reviews have been excellent. I have played it myself now in two different venues: in Mass (with Yehuda Hanani and Jonathan Berrick on the Encounters Series), in Park City, Utah with Luci Linn and Mike Reynolds-members of the Muir Quartet. It was played on the Second Helpings series with members of the Orchestra of St. Lukes in NYC and recently by some topnotch younger players (Joyce Yang, Raman Ramakrishnan and Erin Keefe at the OK Mozart Festival in Oklahoma). The Eroica Trio plans to play it next year. I think FOR DANIEL will have an active life!”

Published: G. Schirmer

CD: KOCH/E 1 Entertainment, probably in 2010

Joan Tower’s music is noted by a number of defining qualities: driving rhythms and colorful orchestrations influenced by the sounds and sensations of a childhood spent in South America; approachability for listeners and players alike, resulting from her engagement with the performers of her music (often written with specific musicians in mind) and her own performances as a pianist. Early works were serial in conception. In the 1970s she moved toward more tonal, Messiaen-like sonorities. She has written a number of works paying homage to composers such as Beethoven (Concerto for Piano), Stravinsky (Petroushskates), and Copland (Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman). She was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission, Made in America. Its top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards, including Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

The composer writes: The work was written expressly for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robison Trio and is dedicated to my nephew Daniel MacArthur, who passed away in December 2003 after a long illness.

The 17-minute trio conveys the complex emotions of someone facing a terminal, long-range illness. The hope, joy, depression, pain, deep turmoil and occasional serenity are in constant juxtaposition in this work—as they were throughout the last years of Daniel’s life. As the end approaches, so does the intensity. In my work, this intensity is expressed in a fast and loud way. Daniel was probably more accepting. May he now rest in peace.