Eric Whitacre

In 1995, in my first semester at The Juilliard School, I had some very difficult lessons with composer David Diamond. Totally paralyzed me creatively. In desperation I tried writing a ‘serious’ string trio.

I thought I had lost the recording forever, but lo and behold it showed up in one of our moving boxes. It’s a flawed piece, to be sure, but it perfectly captures the internal struggle I went through that first year in New York. I’ll definitely re-use some of this material, especially the ‘butterfly chords’ in the piano.