Faded Colors
a Piano Trio
Duration: 7 min
Program Note:
Gilda Lyons asked me to write a piece for the Hymn Tune Project. Some 35 hymns were requested by the parishioners of St. Matthew & St. Timothy. When the hymns arrived in the mail, I was thoroughly caffeinated and compelled to set all of them into a four-evening-mega-symphonic-multi-opera-cycle that will fill United States of America with glory.
Fortunately, Gilda was the voice of reason: “A five-minute Piano Trio on just one hymn please, Wang Jie.”
That’s when the real difficulty began: I became a teenager in front of a dessert cart.
But I was quickly drawn to the melody of De Colores. Gilda translated the text into English for me. “Aha, the text explains the joyfulness in the melody”, I soon discovered, “It’s perfect as it is.” The question then becomes: “what can I do for it”, as supposed to “what can I do with it.”
Eventually, I didn’t have the heart to rip it apart, so the decision was mostly intuitive: they will have to resemble but be a contrast, and some kind of parallel but contrary.
The way I see it: FADED COLORS is a complimentary to De Colores. So it is perfect that you will hear them presented together as a pair.
Commissioned by the Phoenix Concerts