Composer's Note

The Triple Concerto was composed at a time when I was thinking particularly about where my compositional ideas stand on the continuum from chaos to simplicity. Between these two poles, we find the beloved complexity – a rather attractive place. Working on this continuum seems to be strongly connected with a kind of instinct; a distillation of the knowledge and experiences I have gained as a musician. Coming from this background, composing is often like an improvisation played with my own rules within a self-determined form. Perhaps that is enough said about the biotope in which this work was created. This Triple Concerto is a vehicle to give the soloists space for their musicality and virtuosity. As an active trombonist myself, I am fairly familiar with the internal mechanisms of a brass player. And particularly, for this reason, it was a special challenge to find music that, while looking for an individual statement, neither flees to the „brave new world“ of air sounds and extended techniques nor simply echos the last flowering of brass culture from 100 years ago with its endless loops of scales and arpeggios. Each soloist has his moment in the spotlight – accompanied by two percussionists – and each solo is dedicated to a brass hero of mine: the jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson (1928-2006), without whose inspiration I might not have chosen to be a musician, the trombonist and composer Vinko Globokar (*1934), without whose trailblazing I might not have had a career as a trombonist, and the tubist and pedagog Arnold Jacobs (1915-1998), without whose teaching I might not be able to play to this day.

– Mike Svoboda, February 2015