Origin Story recounts the journey of a musical work’s creation and a performance’s interpretive roots. By way of interview and coaching, the sounds, feelings, and ideas the composer has lived and synthesized in the piece’s creation are brought to life through the performer/composer collaboration.
Each Origin Story is akin to a “revealing of secrets” in contemporary classical music. We contemplate and elaborate on the meaning of interpretation, the ineffable contribution of ideas from both composer and performer not written on the printed page but scrawled onto its margins and brought to life in performance.
Interviews and Coaching
Sessions reveal ideas in the composers’ own words through film.
Annotated Scores
Bowing and fingering suggestions with rehearsal commentary reveal how notation and conversation transform artistic choices. Each work’s shape and affect are set in motion by the composer; the story is then told by the performers; western notation comes together with nuanced expression to form an interpretation.
Composer's Notes
Analyses of structure, themes, and/or harmony provide architectural insight that resonates with the work’s expressive center. Analysis is a cornerstone of our musical toolkit, and these resources provide a guide to through complex elements that are often highly individualized for composers.
Full Performance
Full performance video, or link to commercial recording by the artists is included.
Origin Story Reaches
Performers
We seek to transcend the page, and to understand more deeply what a composer intends. Origin Story provides the materials to hear a composer’s ideas directly, transcending time and geography.
Programmers
We seek ephemeral but tantalizing connections between pieces, and to understand better works that are newly introduced to us. We want to inspire the imagination to hear things differently by way of context. Origin Story provides a backstory that will inspire programmatic thinking.
Music Lovers
We seek to understand works more deeply with each listening and to explore what different interpretations reveal. We are happy when we hear things that surprise us and which we feel we connect to or understand even in an intangible way. Origin Story is an entry-point for deeper listening.
Origin Stories
Anna Weesner - The 8 Lost Songs of Orlando Underground
Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet
Commissioned by the Lark Quartet (with cellist Caroline Stinson) in 2018; recording released on Bridge Records (2019).
In November 2022, Anna Weesner came to Durham to work with the Ciompi Quartet (Quartet-in-Residence at Duke University) and clarinetist Romie DeGuise Langlois for a performance in Baldwin Auditorium.
The film was made during this collaboration. Annotated scores will be available from the publisher as an add-on at time of purchase. All other content is free.
John Harbison - Presences
Sextet for Solo Cello and String Quintet (string quartet and contrabass)
Commissioned by Apple Hill and premiered by the Apple Hill String Quartet in 2016.
Caroline Stinson performed the work in New York and Pennsylvania with the Verona Quartet and Jeremy McCoy in 2016, and in 2023 with the Lydian Quartet and Rachel Calin at Duke University and Emmanuel Church in Boston, celebrating John Harbison’s 85th birthday.
Filming took place during this collaboration and while recording with Judy Sherman at Brandeis University in May, 2024.
Support
Origin Story has been supported by Duke University with grants from The Duke Endowment through the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and Dean of Humanities, the Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Council, and the Ciompi Quartet Fund.