Deborah Weisz

I wrote this version of "Grace" for Jazz Orchestra first, and the small group chart (for my Quintet) came from this larger piece.Inspired by my brother’s life. This was the first piece of music that I wrote after the death of my brother. I had stopped writing music and was having some difficulties starting again when I went to have a lesson with jazz composer Bob Brookmeyer. We talked about emotion and music. He encouraged me to write not about the emotions, but to write about what the emotions inspired. Grace was the result.This piece was the real beginnings of what I call my ‘textural’ writing. By this, I mean sections of the music where many things are happening in many voices, in an overlapping density of sound that isn’t about melody or harmony or even rhythm, but this texture that moves the music along.
Prize Winner - 2000 Julius Hemphill Composition Contest