Lonnie and Lonie (2019)
(Double concerto for orchestra with solo trumpet and solo piano)

Composer note
This work was inspired by my twin uncles, Lonnie and Lonie Griffith, who as teenagers were frequently tasked with watching over me while my parents were at work on weekends. We would go to horror movies like Mr. Sardonicus, where the director himself calls for a vote on whether the title character should suffer or escape the consequences of his depredations. Later, at the now-defunct Illinois Slag and Ballast Company, where Lonnie and Lonie were supervisors, they got me a job cleaning out railroad cars during a particularly intense Chicago winter.

Lonnie and Lonie expressed both complementary and contrasting views of the world, a circumstance that, in line with my general understanding of the important trope of depiction in American music (Ives, Ellington, and Carter, for examples), is perfectly suited to the deployment of the concerto form, which has offered composers the opportunity to enact both agonistic and cooperative dramaturgical experiences of the dialogue among soloist(s) and orchestra. I’d like to provide this small hint to you automobile buffs out there as to which soloist represents “Lonnie” and which “Lonie”: I remember when both were driving “muscle cars” — a Dodge Charger (Lonnie) and an SS396 Chevrolet Chevelle (Lonie). In the concluding double cadenza, the soloists, driving fast and noisily through the narrower streets of Chicago’s Englewood district, head each other off at the pass before the work’s emphatic, but somehow pensive conclusion.

This work is dedicated to Lonnie Griffith (1947-) and the memory of Lonie Griffith (1947-2002). I would like to thank Glen Whitehead, Susan Grace, Maestro Thomas Wilson, and the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs for bringing this project to full fruition.

— George Lewis