Behind the Music: Dark with Excessive Bright

A program like this weekend’s Back to the Future is created around the spark of an idea. For me it usually comes as the catalytic combination of a musical work, a specific artist, and just the right timing. When I discovered that Missy Mazzoli, one of the most exciting and innovative composers in the world right now, wrote a double bass concerto that premiered less than a year earlier, I immediately emailed Jeff Turner about it, and the match was lit! The pandemic extended the timing bit more than anticipated from that initial conversation back in January 2019, but after a 20-month delay, we now feel even more honored to present Dark with Excessive Bright, making Pittsburgh one of the handful of American cities to experience what the Chicago Classical Review called "the finest double-bass concerto of the past fifty years."

The title of the piece comes from Paradise Lost - a surreal and evocative description of the garments of God by Milton, who was blind: “Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle heaven…” Mazzoli says that she loved “the impossibility of this phrase”, and found it to be a “strangely accurate way to describe the dark but heartrending sound of the double bass itself.”

“I was inspired in no small part by Maxime [Bibeau]’s double bass, a massive instrument built in 1580 that was stored in an Italian monastery for hundreds of years and even patched with pages from the Good Friday liturgy. I imagined this instrument as a historian, an object that collected the music of the passing centuries in the twists of its neck and the fibers of its wood, finally emerging into the light at age 400 and singing it all into the world.”
— Missy Mazzoli

“It is a piece that celebrates extremes – of color, of sound quality, of high and low, of loud and soft - all in service of what Missy calls ‘effects of dark and bright.’ It is a great honor to have the opportunity to play a role in the introduction of pieces that have a significant impact on the development and history of our instrument. It has become clear over the past couple of years that this work will have influence on writing for the bass for many years to come.”
— Jeffrey Turner

It has been almost two years since our Resonance Chamber Orchestra has performed in-person, and we have missed you terribly! I hope you will join us this weekend - Saturday November 13 & Sunday November 14 at 7:30pm at the Greer Cabaret at Theater Square downtown. This is a fun new venue for us - perhaps not where you might expect a chamber orchestra concert, but just perfect for creating the unique ResWorks experience, bringing you closer to the music, and celebrating our return to the stage!

Explore the origins of Dark with Excessive Bright in this short film documenting the collaboration between Missy Mazzoli and Maxime Bibeau, who premiered the piece with the Australian Chamber Orchestra

Enjoy a short excerpt of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s performance of Dark with Excessive Bright from 2019!