I was recently lucky enough to meet with composer Alexandra Gardner, whom I had the honor of commissioning a work for my Philadelphia recital debut. I'm so excited to give the world premiere of her newly written Hummingbird Dreams in Philadelphia on December 15th.

As an Astral Artists micro-commission, Alexandra wrote this wonderful piece for me and it’s absolutely beautiful. It's full of imagination and rhythmic intensity and - surprise, surprise - lots of bird calls, because I'm crazy about the music of Messiaen, and that's just what I wanted.

When I asked Alexandra about her writing process, she shared some special insights. Read more of what she said below.

When I'm working on music, I'm often a little bit susceptible to my environment. When I was writing this piece, I was house-sitting for a friend on the West Coast who had a lot of hummingbird feeders. So I was surrounded by hummingbirds all day long.
At some point I thought, "Well, I don't understand where they sleep? What do they do?" So I did a bunch of research and found out that they sleep completely opposite their normal daytime way of being, which is they sleep with a very, very slowed down metabolism kind of hanging upside down completely still on a branch.
I thought the contrast of that was so interesting to me that it made its way into my work. So while the bird calls you hear aren't specific to any particular bird, I just had them on my mind. I think it sort of wove its way into the piece.

Alexandra is right, and I’m so excited to perform Hummingbird Dreams this month! If you are in Philly, join me at the American Philosophical Society, December 15 at 3 PM. Tickets are available via Astral.

My Philadelphia Debut and New Commission

Clara Schumann and Brahms Through the Eyes of Eugenie Schumann

Finding Revelation in Messiaen’s Music: My Fulbright year in Paris