Inspired by the chaotic scheme of weather patterns, I wondered how these might transfer musically, as if the past several hundred years of musical ideas were swirling around, and I could just grab things I liked and build on them. I imagined history as being not so much like a timeline, but like an elevator where I could stop at whatever floor I wanted, and everything was going on simultaneously. The elevator went up to eight, where I found Vivaldi, who of course wrote a massive string piece based loosely on the same subject. Weather One is influenced by Vivaldi’s motoric string writing and use of canons, where melodies are played in close succession creating a blurry, cloudy effect. Weather One is the first movement of Weather, an evening length work for string orchestra and electronics. Weather was commissioned by the Seimans Foundation for the German-based string group, Ensemble Resonanz.
