An Ecology of Caring

Instrumentation: solo cello

Duration: 10’

Year Composed: 2019

Premiere: April 13, 2019 • Hanna Rumora

Program Note

Cellist and frequent collaborator Hanna Rumora first approached me about writing a solo cello piece in fall, 2018, directly after the wedding of my brother and sister-in-law. The wedding ceremony included an extraordinarily moving reading from Kathleen Dean Moore’s environmentally focused memoir, The Pine Island Paradox. In the passage, Moore presents a list of possible definitions for what it means to love a person or a place - “the ecology, one might say, of caring,” as she so eloquently puts it. This list became a sort of road map for the structure of this piece, as the list considers in turn both the romantic and tragic aspects of love.

 An Ecology of Caring was commissioned by Hanna Rumora with generous support from the University of Michigan EXCEL lab Enterprise Fund. The work was premiered on April 13, 2019 by Hanna Rumora in Ann Arbor, MI.