Program Notes

The City of New York has been known as “Gotham,” “The Big Apple,” and “The city that never sleeps” to both its residents as well as those who come to visit, and many composers have tried to capture this metropolis' multifaceted magnificence in music for decades, utilizing different sounds and temperaments to bring out the melting pot that continues to interest the entire world.

So when Gerard Schwarz, a longtime advocate of American composers, commissioned William Thomas McKinley to write a new composition for the New York Chamber Symphony, he jumped at the opportunity to create a work that would represent the color and soundscape of this multidimensional city and also showcase the orchestra's “rich and bright sound that this orchestra reveals under Gerard Schwarz’s wonderfully buoyant and energetic leadership.”

In his program notes for the work, McKinley writes, “Having worked with these intense artists many times before, I found it easy to imagine, in a single vision, a dramatic overture cast in a traditional and serious manner. My impressions and memories of New York provided a direct catalyst. Woven into the overture are a number of ‘hints’ derived from well-known melodies which have endured as popular romanticizations [sic] of New York’s manifold personality. Coupled with these ‘hints’ are my own Tin-Pan Alley and jazz experiences, presented and transformed throughout the melodic and harmonic fabric. Rhythmically, the New York Overture seeks to create perpetual motion and movement as a metaphor for what we see and encounter in the New York streets, with their intricate rhythmic patterns of pulsing energy. Listeners will, I hope, discover in it their own feelings and memories, aroused by the aura of this dazzling, varied, and yet monolithic city.”

Scored for a classical era-sized orchestra augmented by harp, piano and two percussionists performing on a variety of mallet instruments to highlight the prismatic wind and brass textures and infinite melodic string passages adorned by affluent harmonies, the overture received its premiere on 12 May 1990 in the Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street Y, New York.

– Kevin Scott, December 2022