Steven Bryant

all stars are love began as a simple song written as a surprise gift for my wife, Verena, for our wedding in 2010. I set the E.E. Cummings poem all stars are (and not one star only) love, and our dear friend and extraordinary soprano, Hila Plitmann, performed it at the ceremony in Austria. Fellow composer Eric Whitacre suggested at the time that it would work well as an instrumental work, and that thought stuck with me, until the right opportunity to adapt the work arose. This commission from the Colorado Wind Ensemble and CWE Commissioning Project Consortium gave me that opportunity. I can’t seem to simply transcribe a work from one medium to another, however, and I ended up recomposing large portions of the work, so this version contains as much new music as material from the original song, though the dramatic shape and harmonic progression at the heart of the work remain.

Note: I’ve since made a version for Soprano voice + Wind Ensemble which is again substantially different from this version.

Commissioned by: Colorado Wind Ensemble Consortium

Dedicated to: Verena

Premiered

6 April 2014, Colorado Wind Ensemble, Matthew Roeder, conductor

Technical Info

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