“In the end, stories are about one person saying to another:
this is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying?
Does it also feel this way to you?” –Kazuo Ishiguro
The program notes I write are meant to help open the door to the music —to make something that can sometimes feel tricky more approachable.
I composed this piece for
our dazzling singer, Ann Moss
Ann and I share a love of Joni Mitchell, and it struck me that her song Both Sides Now perfectly captures the spirit of this concert.
In Both Sides Now, Mitchell explores three ideas...
Clouds, Love, and Life each from both a positive and a negative perspective,
finding beauty and resolution in their contradictions.
I borrowed that structure for my own work, and even wove in fragments of Mitchell’s melodies as subtle motifs. But I didn’t want to use her iconic lyrics — they belong too much to her. Instead, I turned to my favorite writer,
William Shakespeare and found lines from his plays that mirrored the same contrasts: Clouds - beautiful in The Tempest and ominous in King Lear; Love - rapturous in Romeo and Juliet and cynical in Much Ado About Nothing; Life, wondrous in Pericles and unbearable in Macbeth
I was amused to discover that Shakespeare’s most earnest love speeches
appear in tragedies, while his comedies dwell on love’s difficulties.
In composing the piece, I hid the Joni Mitchell material at first,
letting it gradually emerge as the music unfolded
–a kind of reverse theme and variations.
The result is a song cycle, with each short “movement”
presenting a different Shakespearean character’s perspective.
Over the course of the piece, Ann takes on the voices of Juliet, King Lear, Miranda, Macbeth and more — each offering a different lens on clouds, love, and life.
Writing this piece for Ann was a joy and a privilege. Our first rehearsal
left us both in tears— moved by the chance to bring this music to life together.
I’m excited to share this piece and our entire program with you
on July 25 in San Francisco and and 26 in Berkeley
– Hope to see you!
Matthew Cmiel
Composer and Conductor
Daybreak
After Everything, July 25 & 26
There’s an old Hindu parable—adapted beautifully in thispoem— Six blind men describe an elephant Each touches a different part and arrives at a different truth: the leg is a tree, the tail a rope, the side a wall. Each perception is honest, yet incomplete. None grasp the whole picture
Music is the elephant.
So vast and too expansive to take in all at once. But that doesn’t stop us from connecting.
You might hear radiant harmonies.
The person beside you notices the clarinet’s gentle arc.
Someone else feels the pulse of the rhythm.
Each listener experiences their own version of the whole.
This is what our July concert is about: the beauty of partial truths and the richness of perspectives.
Some works explore this intellectually. Others, emotionally.
But all of them live in that space of shared yet unique experience.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing how each piece
on the program reflects this central idea.
But for now, I want to introduce what I call our canvas—
the connective tissue of the evening.
This concert, like several we’ve done recently, will unfold without pauses or intermission. Music flows continuously, anchored by a recurring motif. For this program, our anchor is Ravel’s “Daybreak” from Daphnis et Chloé—a lush, iconic evocation of sunrise.
Why Daybreak? Sunrise is a universal experience and, like the elephant, it’s interpreted differently by every eye—and every ear. Across the concert, you’ll hear ten different sunrises, some adapted from Ravel and others drawn from different composers’ visions.
Of course, Ravel scored Daybreak for full orchestra. We have nine musicians. So instead of simply scaling it down, we asked four different composers to create their own arrangements—each a personal take on the same luminous material. One may highlight a solo violin. Another may shift octaves or reimagine the texture entirely.
It’s not just transcription—it’s perspective, priority, voice.
They’re working on those arrangements now—and I can’t wait for you to hear them. Each one reveals something new. Maybe the trunk. Maybe the tail. Maybe something entirely unexpected. No matter what, I know we’ll hear the music—and the elephant—together.
Warmly, Matthew Cmiel
Director, After Everything
West Coast Premiere: Kate Soper's "Epithets"After Everything, July 25 & 26
One hero, many truths
Kate Soper is one of my favorite living composers. I’m thrilled to lead the West Coast Premiere of her extraordinary new work, Epithets
I first encountered Epithets last year, when it was still in progress,
at a New York workshop. Even unfinished, it grabbed me immediately—
a brilliant, deeply human take on Homer’s Odyssey. I knew I had to bring it to After Everything’s audiences.
What makes it so special?
In Epithets, Kate pulls the descriptive phrases scattered throughout The Odyssey—
“wine-dark,” “wise-eyed,” “lion-hearted,” and so on — and strips them of their narrative context.
She sets them to voice as lists: grouped by the characters they describe.
On the page, it seems almost clinical — but when you hear it, something remarkable happens.
As each epithet stacks onto the next, a richer,
more complicated picture of each character emerges.
Odysseus becomes not just “wise-eyed” or “tricky-minded,” but
a whole, flawed, brilliant person.
That’s what this concert is about: how our individual perspectives,
when shared, can reveal a deeper, more complete truth.
We can’t wait to share this experience with you.
Join us for a program of insight, beauty, and discovery.
Visible Reminder of (In)visible Light
After Everything, July 25 & 26
One of the interesting qualities of light
is that it is invisible and yet allows us to see.
Ken Ueno, the composer of a piano trio
that we will be performing, was drawn to this idea
when he started to notice flowers that were backlit by sunrises,
“...like a spotlight through a lantern”
Wait too long, move too much and it will disappear–
Petals glow with the sun’s radiance, translucent, shining;
the flower stalk an eclipse blocking the sun.
We see the flower, the strength of the light behind it.
A unique perspective.
I can look at a flower, and I am simply looking at a flower,
Backlit by the sun, I am looking through it at the light beyond.
In a sense, I am seeing the light itself.
What I am seeing is
a reminder of the light,
the reminder of what we almost always will take for granted.
Ken Ueno’s piece,
Visible Reminder of Invisible Light adapted into our concert title, (in)Visible Evidence
captures this idea. The piano, with its low chords, grounds me
like the flower stalk. The violin and cello, slow, scratchy,
delicate, and out of tune sounds, express the ephemeral light flowing
through the delicate petals of flowers.
The harmonics played by the strings are the beautiful light effect. and
Less beautiful sounds – scratch tones, percussion, brushing noises–
it could be the sun, stinging my eyes when I readjust my position.
And then, this beautiful moment in time– a sunrise delicately lighting a flower
petal– ends, and the harmonies sink back down.
All that remains is the piano playing the stalk of the flower.
And we have lost our visible reminder of invisible light.
Ken Ueno’s Visible Reminder of Invisible Light will be featured on
After Everything’s upcoming concert (in)Visible Evidence.
There will be 2 performances -
July 25th at Community Music Center San Francisco, 7:30pm
and July 26th at The Crowden School, Berkeley, 7:30pm
Concert is free and open to the public, please come!