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The River Cam
Browse CatalogCello & String Orchestra
Note from Composer
In the fall of 2010 I spent a term at Cambridge University as a Visiting Fellow (at the gorgeous Sidney Sussex College). I wrote and conducted and taught and attended classes, and generally had the time of my life.
I also walked a lot. Every day I would stroll through the streets of Cambridge out to Newnham, a 25-30 minute walk each way, following the idyllic banks along The River Cam.
As I walked alongside the river these little melodies began forming in my mind, informed by the sights, the sounds, the history of the land and of the University. Day after day I would sing these fragments, not really knowing what they were or what they might become. Around this time the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber asked me to write a piece for his 60th birthday concert, and I knew even as he was asking I would use these fragments as the foundation of the new work.
As the piece was beginning to take form I realized that I was writing a ‘pastoral piece’, undeniably British, with serious echoes of Elgar and Vaughan Williams. I didn’t care. I just tried to follow the thread of the melodic fragments and capture as best I could the quiet and heartbreaking beauty of The River Cam.
The piece was first performed April 14, 2011 at the Royal Festival Hall, played by the extraordinary Philharmonia Orchestra; Julian Lloyd Webber; cello; I was conducting.
Instrumentation
Solo cello
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Contrabass
Duration
11 minutes
Year of Composition
2011
Licensing
Hire
Recording
Music Catalog
- A Boy and a Girl
- All Seems Beautiful To Me
- Alleluia
- Alone
- Animal Crackers Vol. I
- Animal Crackers Vol. II
- as is the sea marvelous
- Child of Wonder
- Cloudburst
- Deep Field
- Enjoy the Silence
- Equus
- Five Hebrew Love Songs
- Fly to Paradise
- Ghost Train
- Glow
- Go, Lovely Rose
- Godzilla Eats Las Vegas!
- Goodnight Moon
- Her Sacred Spirit Soars
- Higher, Faster, Stronger
- Home
- hope, faith, life, love
- Hurt
- i carry your heart
- I Hide Myself
- i thank You God for most this amazing day
- i walked the boulevard
- i will wade out
- Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine
- Little Birds
- little man in a hurry
- little tree
- Lux Aurumque
- Lux Nova
- maggie and milly and molly and may
- Mermaids (from Pirates of the Caribbean 4)
- Noisy Wheels of Joy
- Nox Aurumque
- October
- Oculi Omnium
- Paradise Lost
- Prelude in C
- Psalm 137: By the Waters of Babylon
- Sainte-Chapelle
- She Weeps Over Rahoon
- Sing Gently
- Sleep
- Sleep My Child
- Songs of Immortality
- The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus
- The Chelsea Carol
- The City and the Sea
- The Gift of the Magi
- the moon is hiding in her hair
- The River Cam
- The Sacred Veil
- The Seal Lullaby
- The Star-Spangled Banner
- The Stolen Child
- This Marriage
- Three Flower Songs
- Three Songs of Faith
- Very Soon
- Water Night
- What If
- When David Heard
- Winter
- With A Lily In Your Hand
- You Rise, I Fall