World premiere: Sofiya Levchenko, ensemble mise-en, Tenri Cultural Institute, Manhattan, NY, Dec. 8, 2024
“The composer Kaija Saariaho had profound influence on the music of the latter half of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st. I feel privileged to have known her since 2013, when she lived and worked in the U. S. as Carnegie Hall Composer-in-Residence. Shortly after that, I conducted the U. S. premiere of her Leino Songs with the Orchestra of the League of Composers. Her untimely death at age 70, not long after the premiere of her landmark opera, Innocence, moved all of us, and I wrote Processions III In Memoriam: Kaija Saariaho as a tribute, recalling in its mid-section characteristic violin techniques she so effectively introduced and employed.” – LK