Host Premieres New Work at Station Break

Christopher O'Riley. Photo by J Henry Fair

On every broadcast, Christopher O’Riley performs a piece during the station break. Our live audiences are treated to the full performance, though on the broadcast only a portion of the performance is heard.

Among the break pieces Chris is performing this season is the world premiere of “Falling Canons” by Grammy Award winner Kenneth Fuchs. The first of these performances was included on our Salt Lake City broadcast, and the second of which is included on this week’s broadcast. Chris will continue to perform the remaining canons periodically on our broadcasts.

Chris told us more about this premiere:

Grammy Award-winning American composer Kenneth Fuchs’ most recent work includes an aria for baritone and orchestra entitled Falling Man, based on J. D. McClatchy’s excerpted material from Don Delillo’s eponymous 9/11 novel. As Ken was working on the piece, he became fascinated with the machinations within the thematic material, and decided to create a series of piano pieces more rigorously exploring the motivic possibilities. The resultant work, Falling Canons, is a set of 7 canons, each springing from a descending scalar and rhythmic degree (#1 at the unison ending on B, #2 at the second ending on A; each with attention to rhythmic permutations inherent in each degree). The aria and the piano pieces are set to premiere in the coming year, with a subsequent recording in Vienna soon after.

I am proud to be Ken’s chosen advocate for this new piece, and as each canon is relatively short, I thought it would be nice to roll out each in premiere performances as part of From The Top tapings around the country.”