[#234] January 15, 2024
2021 | Chamber Winds | Grade 5 | 5' - 10'
Overflow, by English American composer Anne Clyne is our Composition of the Week.
Overflow was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and first performed on April 14, 2021, at Perth Concert Hall, Perth, by musicians from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Daniel, OBE.
“Overflow is a wind dectet inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem, By The Sea, in which we experience the ocean’s power over the poet’s imagination - both alluring, unsettling and dangerous. The line from which this piece takes its title “Would overflow with Pearl” reminded me of an image from Jelaluddin Rumi’s poem Where Everything is Music whereby the tiniest motion of a pearl on the ocean floor can cause great waves above. The opening sonority of Overflow also draws inspiration from Rumi’s words of a “slow and powerful root that we can’t see” with a low B-flat, the lowest pitch of the ensemble emerging from silence.” Program Notes by Anna Clyne
Overflow has a duration of 10 minutes, and it is available on rental, at Boosey and Hawkes.
Anna Clyne studied at the University of Edinburgh, from which she graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Music degree with honours. She later studied at the Manhattan School of Music and earned a MA degree in music. Her teachers have included Marina Adamia, Marjan Mozetich and Julia Wolfe.
She was director of the New York Youth Symphony's "Making Score" programme for young composers from 2008 to 2010. In October 2009, Clyne and Mason Bates were named co-composers in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), as of the 2010–2011 season. She took up the residency in 2010, for a scheduled term of two years. In January 2012, her CSO contract as co-composer in residence was extended through the 2013–2014 season. After completing her tenure with the CSO, Clyne was announced as the composer-in-residence for Orchestre National d'Île-de-France from 2014 to 2016 and for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 2015–2016 season.
Anna Clyne was nominated for the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her double violin concerto Prince of Clouds. She is also the recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2016 Hindemith Prize; a 2010 Charles Ives Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; awards from Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation; and prizes from ASCAP and SEAMUS. She was nominated for the 2014 Times Breakthrough Award (UK) and is the recipient of a grant from Opera America to develop a new opera, Eva.
She has served as a Mead Composer-in-Residence for several prominent orchestras including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre National d'Ile-de-France. She has been commissioned by such renowned organizations as American Composers Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, BBC Scottish Symphony, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Ballet, London Sinfonietta, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and the Southbank Centre, and her work has been championed by such world-renowned conductors as Marin Alsop, Pablo Heras-Casado, Riccardo Muti, Leonard Slatkin, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Other works for winds include:
A wonderful day (2013)
Masquerade (transc. Llinás) (2013/2018)
More on Anna Clyne
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