It’s a true honor to be invited to celebrate Tim Lovelace’s semi-centennial with a new composition for violin and piano – especially since the invitation came from Tim himself as a gift from his wife Cristina. Tim, I hope your deeply musical soul, your love of collaborating with performers, your devotion to teaching, and most importantly your kindness, humanity and generosity are well served in the music of Timepiece for Tim.

About the music - I hoped to create a calm, flowing and peaceful world that sometimes holds time in a slightly suspended way and sometimes releases it – allowing time to work with its own moments to create the piece’s life. 

In mulling over the significance of a 50th birthday, the equation 25+25=50 kept popping into my head.  Not 49+1, not 35+15 or any other combination, just 25+25. I took this as inspiration! Since Timothy Lovelace’s age is one half of one hundred years and twenty-five years is one quarter of that, I based the harmonic language of the piece in three-note quartal chords composed of interlocking intervals of perfect fourths  (25+25).  In equal tuning, it takes five octaves for a quartal circle (an upward progression of fourths beginning with a fundamental – C for instance) -  to complete itself. If you think of one octave as 10 years, then the quartal circle closes itself at 50 years.  Wishing you a musical, mathematical

Happy 50th Birthday, Tim!