Marti Epstein (b. 1959)

Nachtvoll, for flute, viola, and harp (2013)

Composer Marti Epstein has been a fixture on the Boston new-music scene since the 1980s, when she was a graduate student at Boston University. Since that time, she’s established herself as one of the region’s most sought-after teachers and composers, having been performed by a number of prominent local ensembles, including Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Ludovico Ensemble, Guerilla Opera, the Fromm Foundation, and the Tanglewood Music Center (where she was twice a composition fellow). She currently teaches at both Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory. About Nachtvoll, she writes:

Nachtvoll, in memory of Hans Werner Henze, was written in 2013 for the Trio Notturno. Formally, it is loosely based on Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments; it is a succession of several different musical ideas juxtaposed and organized in a variety of different ways, similar to the way tiles might be organized in a mosaic, or the way different colored beads might be organized in a necklace.  The piece ends with a quote from Henze’s Being Beauteous.

© Jonathan Blumhofer

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