Arizona Echoes
Subtitle: Sinfonia for Concert Band
General Info
Year: 2024
Duration: c. 12:00
Difficulty: VII (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Russell Platt
Cost: Score and Parts (print) – Rental | Score Only (print) - $50.00
Movements
- Recollection: Largo
- Pastimes, Premonitions: Con moto
- Obligation: In modo marziale, poco pesante
- Remembrance: Grave
Instrumentation
- Full Score
- D-flat Piccolo
- C Piccolo
- Flute I-II
- Oboe I-II
- English Horn
- Bassoon I-II
- Contra-Bassoon
- E-flat Soprano Clarinet
- B-flat Soprano Clarinet I-II-III
- B-flat Bass Clarinet
- B-flat Soprano Saxophone
- E-flat Alto Saxophone
- B-flat Tenor Saxophone
- E-flat Baritone Saxophone
- B-flat Trumpet I-II-III-IV
- E-flat Horn or Alto I-II-III-IV
- Horn in F I-II-III-IV
- Trombone I-II
- Bass Trombone
- Euphonium
- Tuba
- Contra-Bass
- Timpani
- Percussion I-II-III-IV-V, including:
- *Bass Drum
- *Marimba
- *Orchestra Bells (or Glockenspiel)
- *Sizzle Cymbal
- *Snare Drum
- *Suspended Cymbal
- *Tam-tam
- *Temple Blocks
- *Tenor Drum
- *Tom-toms
- *Triangle
- *Vibraphone
- *Xylophone
Errata
None discovered thus far.
Program Notes
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was traveling in a subway train beneath the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Only after I arrived at Times Square and entered my office did I realize the terrible scope of what was happening downtown. At the same time, my brother, the photojournalist Spencer Platt, was on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, shooting dozens of pictures of the destruction of the Twin Towers; one of them appeared on the next cover of Time magazine and immediately became one of the iconic images of that horrible day.
Arizona Echoes, my second symphony, was begun in the winter of 2024 and finished in February of the following year. The impetus to compose it came some two decades after 9/11, as my husband and I were vacationing in Hawaii. At the recommendation of my father-in-law, a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve, we visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and I experienced the range of emotions that millions have felt before me. The contrast between the seething, rusted gun turret barbette, and the otherworldly light and calm of the memorial room, was especially powerful, and when musical ideas soon came to my mind, I thought of a piece for concert band.
Arizona Echoes is a twelve-minute sinfonia -- I have used the original and more flexible Italian name for a symphony -- n which a four-movement structure is planned out and fulfilled. The listener can certainly trace an overall arc of prelude, preparation, disaster, and aftermath, and that, indeed, is part of the work’s concept. But I composed the piece by presenting and developing a set of discrete ideas in symphonic forms: the first and last movements can be heard as the exposition and development sections of a sonata, while the inner movements are built in binary and ABA forms. (A dramatic solo cadenza interrupts the progress of the finale.) The use of these forms was deliberate, because it gave me an element of distance from my emotions. My intention in writing the piece was not to interrogate the geopolitical issues involved, but to reflect on a shared experience of catastrophe, and endurance.
- Program Note from Vanderbilt University concert program, 5 April 2025
Media
None discovered thus far.
State Ratings
None discovered thus far.
Performances
To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project
- University of Florida (Gainesville) Symphonic Band (John M. Watkins, Jr., conductor) - 21 October 2025
- Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.) Wind Symphony (Thomas Verrier, conductor) - 5 April 2025 *Premiere Performance*
Works for Winds by This Composer
- Arizona Echoes (2024)
Resources
- Russell Platt, personal correspondence, October 2025
- Russell Platt website. Accessed 22 September 2025
- USS Arizona Memorial. Wikipedia. Accessed 22 September 2025