Greenway (2012)

GREENWAY was inspired by my new-found love of cycling around New York. Following a significant fare hike in New York City’s public transit system, I decided that I would bike as much as possible, part protest / part exercise. Ever since then, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the beautiful Hudson River Greenway, which hugs the West Side of Manhattan, in good weather and bad, in winter and summer.

I began humming strands of what became “Greenway” into my iPhone during a ride from Dumbo (Brooklyn) to our apartment on the Upper West Side.

Asmira Woodward-Page commissioned the piece to be a companion to H.I.F. Biber’s “Passacaglia“, and, in that, “Greenway” is a total opposite, a counterweight — fast, jaunty, optimistic. I envision it being played immediately after the Biber, and followed by a repeat of the Biber. In that, it becomes a sort of “Greenway Sandwich”.

“Greenway” was premiered at Bargemusic, in Dumbo by Elicia Silverstein on baroque violin. It was sandwiched between Biber’s “Passacaglia” and Berio’s “Sequenza” for solo violin.    It premiered during a splendid snowstorm, inspiring painter Adam Maeroff to make the painting, “Fiddler on the West Side Highway” (below).

“Greenway” has also been arranged for violin and cello as part of “Two Roads“.