Tenacity (2021)
by Sunny Knable (b. 1983)
for flute, clarinet in Bb, and piano
circa 8 minutes
written for the Parhelion Trio
 
PROGRAM NOTE:
Tenacity is the third piece written for my dear friends of the Parhelion Trio. As with many failed plans in 2020, the Parhelion Trio was to perform my work Sundog (2014) at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall on an unlucky date: March 31, 2020. After that concert’s cancellation, like many artists, I entered a long period of creative hibernation, observing the world around me and turning to words instead of notes as daily therapy. Then, nearly two years later, just as the world was feeling a little more “normal,” I booked the hall again for a reboot of our original plans. Around this time, a word came to me in a dream like a brightly colored sign flashing as I woke: Tenacity. As any music student will remember, tenere in Latin means “to hold”; and the word “city”, while no literal translation, provided for the touching thought that New Yorkers, being on the front lines of COVID-19, were holding on to our city. There, an idea for a new composition was born. In this short work, I attempt to encapsulate the stages of the pandemic as I experienced them. The seven short sections (all of which, for some mysterious reason unknown to me, start with the letter ‘S’) end with a “reunion of themes” before the final expression of tenacity (see below for the list of sections which are not necessary to print in the program). Parhelion Trio premiered this piece at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall on May 31, 2022, and they did so with tenacity indeed. -- Sunny Knable
 
Sirens
Silence
Solitude
Seven O’clock Clapping
Sixth Day of June
Signs of Hope
Season of Tenacity