About this Piece

For many years, I’ve been interested in how what we hear affects how we perceive time; those cinematic moments where time seems to slow down. When I left the urban canopy of Chicago for an expansive valley in western Illinois in 2001, I experienced how  it goes both ways and how what you see can calibrate your mind to hear a different kind of music. Seeing a storm roll through the valley, pass overhead, and move on had a significant effect my writing. The songs within the suite Weather Systems, Arm- chairs, and Scythians are from this period and I think embody the ebbing and flowing, crooked bow of time.

In working with Gabriel I found an ideal collaborator, one who intimately under- stands how to straddle these two worlds. We wanted to do more than just create tasteful arrangements of my songs, but instead make something entirely new that makes full use of the colors a world-class orchestra can create. Despite being raised playing classical music, this concert is a first for me. Since I left Northwestern School of Music 22 years ago, I’ve come  to think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. It will be interesting to see how far afield I’ve travelled. Andrew Bird, Los Angeles, 2018