Program Note:

I wrote this piece coming out of a challenging point in my life.

Seeking to rekindle myself, I began to visit the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas almost every day, a place I live a ten minute walk from but which I had never really taken the time to visit much before.

At first I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of the Chapel. Human beings venerating a bare and austere hexagonal room with massive slabs on each wall seemed strange. But as I spent more and more time at the place, it began to speak to me, and healed me.

The Chapel's atmosphere is ethereally calm, stasis-like, and the room seems to breathe as clouds and sunlight shift and change. An undercurrent always seems present. The slabs, at first void-like, become warmer, brighter, more colorful and calm, even animated. You begin to notice shapes, figures, faces, objects, the sea and sky all coinciding amidst a panel of endlessly layered rectangles and squares.

The Chapel is a place which is both ominous and inviting, dark and warm.

Every visit I noticed new patterns and new messages. By the time I left town for the summer, my resolve was stronger than ever.

Performances:

• Jerry Hou and the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, Stude Hall, Houston, Texas, March 13, 2025.

• Read by Agata Zajac and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa Hall, Lenox, Massachusetts, August 3, 2023.