Emerald Necklace ... The Story of Frederick Law Olmsted (2009) for narrator and orchestra by Thomas Oboe Lee Large Ensemble - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.869339

Program note.
Maestro Charles Ansbacher has been a devoted supporter of my work for many years. In the past 6 years he has commissioned me to write two works for his ensemble, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra: 

1) Mambo!!! (2003) 
2) Pluto … The Lord of the Underworld (2005) 

This year, 2009, he asked me if I would be interested in writing a work for narrator and chamber orchestra like Prokofiev’s "Peter and the Wolf." I said, "Yes. I would be delighted to do so." He told me that the subject for this work would be Boston’s own landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. "Sure," I said, "why not?" Charles told me he had a poet in mind who would provide the text, Nancy Stevenson. I said, "Great!" 

The work is in four parts, following Ms. Stevenson’s poetic design.

I wrote a marching music in Part One depicting Mr. Olmsted when as a child he walked from his home to his aunts and uncles who "lived far away." As a young man, Mr. Olmsted went through many jobs until he decided that as a landscape architect he could make cities a better place for children and adults alike. The mayor of Boston hired him to do just that, to "make Boston more livable." 

In Part Two, I wrote "presto" music depicting the dredging of the Charles River and the planting of trees along its shores. 

In Part Three, the text describes the Boston Emerald Necklace – the paths that lead from the Fens to the Arboretum to Franklin Park. For this section I chose music that is bucolic and pastoral, a setting that evokes "the country side with a flock of sheep, complete with a shepherd and his dog."

In the last section the text describes Mr. Olmsted’s dream that in his parks there would be "tranquility and rest to the mind … a place where the rich and the poor would play together." The music returns to the legato march that began the work.