"Come to the park they say is dead, and youWill see the glint of smiling shores beyond,Pure clouds with rifts of unexpected blueDiffuse a light on patterned path and pond.Take the grey tinge of boxwood and the charmOf burning-yellow birch. The wind is warm.Late roses still have traces of their hue,So kiss, and gather them, and wreathe them too.Do not forget the asters — last of all —And not the scarlet on the twists of vine,And what is left of living green, combineTo shape a weightless image of the fall."STEFAN GEORGE What is Left of Living Green emerged from two central ideas: an extended breathing motif expressed as a pair of chords swelling and retracting, and abstracted sounds of nature—bird-songs, rattling of leaves in wind, etc—which fade in and out of the foreground. The piece lives in this juxtaposition between larger chorale-like gestures and transient filigree. It also serves as a study of gesture and shaping sounds which aren’t locked to the beats or bar-lines, something with which I have wanted to experiment. The title is based on a line from Stefan George’s “After the Harvest,” and was chosen after completion. The time in which the piece was written was colored by deaths and illnesses in my family and community, and I felt a keen awareness of the fragility of life. At the same time, I also found a profound beauty in ephemerality. George’s poem felt like a perfect expression of this. Though the piece began as an exercise for myself in thinking gesturally, it soon became much more. What is Left of Living Green is dedicated to my friend Kate Salfelder, who has shown me all the ways in which a mere exercise can, with effort, be transmuted into something deeply expressive.