(slow orchestral music) - When I'm first starting a composition, there is not one particular
way in which I work. So every composition starts maybe from a different impulse. Of Paradise and Light came about when I received this
wonderful letter from Gerry. - When I was asking my friends of long standing to write works for my final season in Seattle, I asked 18 composers and
Augusta was one of them and she immediately accepted to write one of these Gund/Symoni commissions and we premiered the piece
in September of 2010. (bright orchestral music) - Because Of Paradise and
Light is an arrangement of the work I wrote for the
San Francisco Girl's Choir, the structure of the piece
is in many ways related to the original text, which
is text by e e cummings and very beautiful poem
that has a particular form with a repeating line. Now of course, when one hears
the string orchestra version, they're not gonna be hearing that text, but in some ways it's
a song without voices. Of course there are many of
those in the history of music. - It's a very short
work, but full of things and it just jumps from one idea to another and yet it does have a tremendous ability to feel like a whole work. But she has the great descriptions, she wrote resonant, with more emotion, energized and spry, joyful, suddenly warm, resonant, faster with
sunlight in mood and color, inner and calm. In a way, her words are as poetic as e e cummings's words are,
I think, as is her music. She writes only for the strings, but with no double basses. And it gives a very different color and a very different sound
to the string orchestra. - I love writing for strings. It's been a huge passion
of mine for 30 years. And in fact, it's hard
for me to write music that doesn't have strings in it. One of things about in Paradise and Light is just the pure beauty of these incredible musicians
in this all-star orchestra with incredibly careful bowing and vibrato choices and the way that these harmonies are voiced. The piece in some ways is
very simple and elegant. But on the other hand, it builds up to these rich harmonic
fields that kind of melt and reemerge and things of this kind. And the way that one plays that is very important on a string. I think another
characteristic of the piece is that it's relatively high in register. It's moving up and that's why this image of Of Paradise and
Light, that we're moving toward some other, other
world, or other place and I think that the technique
of playing it is something that the audience would really enjoy because it's very simple and
therefore it becomes very hard. There's no makeup in this piece at all. It's just pure heart. (building orchestral music) - Augusta Read Thomas's Of Paradise and Light is a short work and it's interesting the
way it's constructed. It's constructed in what
I would call gestures. So you have a first gesture,
and then there's a stop. There's an actual feramata and then there's a moment of pause. It's not an arbitrary moment of pause. She actually writes that. And there's another gesture. And there's another moment of pause. And then another gesture,
and it continues in that way. At the same time, it does feel unified. The language is consistent. The material isn't really repeated. It's just developed constantly. I think part of the reason is because the tempo is pretty
much the same throughout. Yes, some a little
faster, a little slower. The color of the orchestra
is just those two violins, viola, cello, with doublings obviously. There aren't woodwinds,
brass, there's no double bass. There's no percussion. It helps us see this
work as a unified whole because the color is very
much consistent throughout. And she uses this silences
in very poignant ways. (music swelling) - I think it's wonderful
when the notes feel right. I mean, in other words,
when I'm composing, if it doesn't feel right, I stop. If I'm sort of (grumbles)
can't get this section right, I just stop because I know that I will just be putting band-aids on something that's not correct. I have to go back to the drawing board, start over, get the flow, get the feel, get the line, sing it, feel it, dance it, and then I know that it's going. (music continues) - Augusta Read Thomas's
Of Paradise and Light is a hugely effective piece, very different than most of her music, but
I think equally wonderful. (bright music continues) (music swells)