#40 – April 27, 2020
JOEL PUCKETT
SOUTHERN COMFORTS
Violin Concerto
https://soundcloud.com/user-642642570-907922214/sets/wasbe-composition-of-the-1
Joel Puckett’s Southern Comforts is our Composition of the Week.
Southern Comforts is a violin concerto with orchestral winds and percussion.
The concerto has a length of about 16 minutes and it was completed in October 2008 for a consortium of collegiate American wind ensembles organized by Robert Ambrose of Georgia State University.
Puckett calls for an ensemble of 15 players:
2222/1110.Doublebass.Piano.Percussion (2)
Southern Comforts is cast in four movements:
- Faulkner
- Ritual: Football and The Lord
- Lamentation
- Mint Julep
They are an evocation of the composer’s nostalgy for his southern home in Atlanta. He tells us more about his feelings on the concerto’s program notes:
“Home. I think about it constantly. I haven’t spent more than a week in the South in more than seven years and yet, I know it will always be home. Sometimes it’s a phone call from mom or a card from my sister. Sometimes it’s the faint smell of a dogwood or an Atlanta Braves box score in the paper. No, I haven’t really been there in years but I think about it daily.
In Southern Comforts I am sharing some of the things that were important to me growing up in Atlanta or have become important in trying to remember home. Each movement is my representation of a memory or item from my childhood in the south”.
Other remarkable works for Wind Ensemble by Joel Puckett are:
- The Shadow of Sirius (Flute Concerto)
That secret from the river (Adagio Symphony)
For more information please visit:
https://joelpuckett.com
