CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN by STEPHEN MELILLO (USA, 1957)
- WASBE Marcom
- Jul 21
- 2 min read
[#313] July 21, 2025 1999/2004 | Orchestral Winds | Grade 6 | 29’ | Concerto
Concerto for Violin, by American composer and educator Stephen Melillo is our Composition of the Week.
Concerto for Violin was written for world-renowned violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers. The original orchestral version was completed on Dec. 31, 1999, and a revised version, allowing the option of a band performance, was completed on Aug. 16, 2004.
Rather than simply transcribing the strings’ music into the wind parts, Melillo left the existing wind parts intact and wrote discrete “string-wind” parts. He specifies that these string-wind players should sit in the same locations as string players in a symphony orchestra, assisted by the use of 2 Synthesizers playing string sounds.
The concerto is written in three movements, Tormentations; Romance; and Allegro Assai Molto Vivace, and it has a duration of 29 minutes.
The music is available at Stormworks.
Stephen Melillo attended the University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1976, the Manhattan School of Music in New York in 1979, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the Boston Conservatory of Music in 1980 and a master's in music and conducting from Columbia University in 1982. He studied conducting with Jens Nygaard and Atilio Poto, a student of Arturo Toscanini.
In addition to film work with New York and Los Angeles based studio orchestras, he has conducted more than 112 live concert premieres.
Stephen Melillo is a many-times recipient of ASCAP Special Awards in Concert Music and has guest conducted and recorded with some of the world’s finest ensembles. His students now enjoy a range of musical careers as teachers, and professional musicians in an eclectic range from television jazz bands to studio musicians to members of major symphony orchestras.
Other works for winds include:
• Erich (1994)
• David (1995)
• Godspeed (1997)
• The Speech of Angels (1998)
More on Stephen Melillo
