Composer’s Note

   I wrote The Soldier’s Blues between the summer of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 as a result of a commission from the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. Since the piece was intended from the very outset as a companion to Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) and as the instrumentation is virtually identical, I decided to pay explicit homage to Stravinsky’s masterwork through small quotations from which a lot of the thematic material for my work germinates.

   The soldier of the title is of course not a flesh-and-blood soldier, but a shorthand reference to the Stravinsky piece, while by “blues” I mean the occasional use of the blues scales and harmonies. I did not set myself the task of writing a true blues piece but rather to explore the resonances of the genre. Also, for the first time in my music I have used a drum set to imbue the piece with the feel of some types of American popular music.

   Movements I and III use the full complement of instruments, while II is essentially a cadenza for solo violin where the bluesy dimension is most sharply present.

PHANOS DYMIOTIS

FIRST PERFORMANCE:
March 22, 2007
Prince Theater, Chestertown, Maryland, USA
Members of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Julien Benishou