A setting of a loving reflection on youth in Cambridge England.

 Duration: 16'

Completion Date: 2001

Instrumentation: Singer, 2 Violins, Viola, and Violoncello

Audio Excerpt:

Score available from Oxford University Press

Commissioned by the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music for Stephanie Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet

Click here to read about Andrew Sofer, the poet behind Wandlebury Ring.

Composer's Note:

When the Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music first asked me to write a work for Stephanie Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet, I chose to commission poet-collaborator Andrew Sofer to write the text for the piece. I had just lost my father to cancer before receiving the commission, and had wanted to write a work about family and times of innocence and youth as I was trying to hold on to and capture memories that I had of childhood and my father. I asked Andrew to explore the themes of youth and childhood in a poem. Andrew describes the result, “Wandlebury Ring,” in this way: “Just outside Cambridge, England, Wandlebury is a mix of wild woods and open grassland on the edge of the Gog Magog hills. The Ring itself was an iron-age hill-fort that later abutted the Roman road to Haverhill. As a boy, I used to love pacing the wooded ring inside the earthworks’ outer ditch with my family; it was a magical place, rich with twenty-five centuries of East Anglian history. When Kevin suggested I write a poem that evoked my childhood in fen country, Wandlebury Ring was a natural subject. As the poem developed, it became as much a love poem to my late father as to Cambridgeshire. The poem is dedicated to his memory.”

I have dedicated this work to Wanda Fleck. Witnessing her passion for music has been an inspiration to me.

—K.B.