Orchestral

Concerto for Orchestra grew out of my friendship with conductor Stéphane Denève. It is dedicated both to him and to the musicians of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, for whom I have developed great admiration since their first performance of my music in 2004.

The third movement of Symphony No. 3, inspired by Icelandic singer Bjork’s album Vespertine.

In the Fall of 2002, I was asked by Rudi Schlegel at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to write “an American Pomp and Circumstance”.

My first symphony was composed in 1998-99 for the California Symphony and premiered on February 28, 1999 by the California Symphony conducted by Barry Jekowsky.

Two Mountain Scenes was commissioned by Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and the New York Philharmonic in celebration of the Festival’s 20th anniversary.

In the Fall of 2002, I was asked by Rudi Schlegel at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to write “an American Pomp and Circumstance”.

The inspiration for Symphony No. 3 came from Icelandic singer Bjork’s album Vespertine.

Every year in August, an entire orchestra of dedicated musicians gathers in Santa Cruz, California to play nothing but contemporary orchestral music for two weeks.

In the September 24, 2001 issue of The New Yorker writer Jonathan Franzen wrote, “In the space of two hours we left behind a happy era of Game Boy economics and trophy houses and entered a world of fear and vengeance.”

Though Puts says he has since adopted a more lyrical and Romantic style, his sparkling, prismatic Network “represents the fascination I had while still a student with “minimalist” and “post- minimalist” composers

Sometime in 2008, I received an unexpected phone call from Dale Johnson, then Artistic Director of Minnesota Opera. He was interested in commissioning an operatic adaptation of Joyeux Noel, the 2005 Christian Carion film based on the spontaneous cease-fires and celebrations which took place along the Western Front on the first Christmas Eve of World War I.

It seems fitting that in fulfilling a commission from St. Louis, a city that sits near the confluence of our nation’s two great rivers, Kevin Puts drew inspiration from the movement of water—its glinting color and texture, its surging energy—as it courses downstream.

"Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky. Thy rays, they encompass the lands…thou bindest them by thy love." Ahknaton, Hymn to the Sun

I wrote Millennium Canons to usher in a new millennium with fanfare, celebration and lyricism.

Falling Dream was commissioned by the BMI Foundation Inc./Carlos Surinach Fund for the 25th Anniversary of the American Composers Orchestra.

Inspiring Beethoven is a musical tale, completely imagined, of Ludwig van Beethoven finding the inspiration to compose the first movement Vivace of his Symphony No. 7.