Jonathan Cole is a composer of varied affinities. He draws inspiration from a wide range of contemporary art, literature, and film and his music has been influenced by composers, who share and equal breadth of interests. Cole’s fascination with music and memory, for instance, helps explain his empathy for the works of Elliott Carter, with their preoccupation with perceptions of time and motion. His sensitivity to timbre and sonority, on the other hand, has been nurtured by his study of the music of Pierre Boulez. The distinctive qualities of Cole’s music – its evocative textures, formal clarity, masterful scoring, rhythmic energy, its spatial dimensionality, and, above all, its ability to engage with an audience’s expectations – mark him as a composer of unusual promise.
In his newest work, Testament, Cole returns again to a central theme of his music: memory. The 11-minute piece is scored for two clarinets, two trumpets, two percussionists, and eight strings. “The work, gentle and dreamlike, is built out of the interrelation between interweaving textures throughout the ensemble”, writes the composer about this piece. “Echoes and shadows of ideas haunt the landscape of the piece throughout and ideas themselves grow out of these constant reminders.”
Testament is dedicated to the memory of Sue Knussen. “I got to know her in the last year of her life”, the composer has written, “and she was exceptionally supportive of my music which meant a great deal to me.” Sue was a friend and mentor to many composers and the fund established in her memory is fittingly devoted to bringing their works to public attention. In her years on the East Coast, in England, and here in Southern California, where she was Education Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1996 to 2000, Sue Knussen touched many, many lives with her warmth, imagination, enthusiasm, and irreverent humour. Sue was universally adored and it is quite likely that as you read this you are, or are sitting next to someone who knew and loved her – and misses her today.