Breathing Sunlight
Details
Category: chamber music
Instrumentation: violin, cello
Version for two violas
Version for violin & tabla
Excerpted version for violin & cello (5’30”)
Year Composed: 2017
Duration: 9’
Price: $25
Praise
“Affirming”
— The Washington Post
“Delicate and vivid.”
— I Care If You Listen
“Beautiful, ruminative”
— Oregon ArtsWatch
“A light-textured but sinewy duet […] Wispy thematic figures flutter past, implying solid harmonic structures underneath. In barely 10 minutes, Tucker built a lovely castle out of air."
— The San Francisco Chronicle
Program Notes
"Breathing Sunlight" was inspired by a melody that started winding into my mind in 2015. When I began learning the Hindustani Raga Bhimpalasi a year later, I realized that it virtually matched the contour of this melody, in pitch as well as in mood. In this piece, finally, the melody found its place. However, I do not state the melody outright. Rather, I watch it oscillate somewhere in the background, beyond the conscious mind of the piece. It approaches the surface and recedes, in one line or through bubbling polyphony.
“Breathing Sunlight” is about moments spent with those who will leave us soon. Simple things, like lying on the grass, in the sun, breathing — these moments of conscious stillness, within a mind racked by mental and physical discomfort — are as significant as they are fleeting. The love we feel in those moments is strong, transcending our physical boundaries.
This work was created under the aegis of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.
Audio Recording
Performer credits:
Johnny Gandelsman (violin)
Joshua Roman (cello)
Performances
• January 29, 2026: Shalini Vijayan, violin, Maggie Parkins, cello, Brightwork newmusic, UC Davis, Davis, CA
• August 9-10, 2025: Sasha Callahan, violin, Leo Eguchi, cello, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Sokol Blosser Winery, Dayton, OR
• August 8, 2025: Sasha Callahan, violin, Leo Eguchi, cello, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Tualatin Public Library, Tualatin, OR
• January 29, 2022: Ensemble for These Times, Ilana Blumberg, violin, Abigail Monroe, cello, Center for New Music, San Francisco, CA
• May 18, 2021: Joshua Roman, cello, Tessa Lark, violin, String Theory, The Hunter Museum of American Art, online from Chattanooga, TN
• November 21, 2020: A Far Cry, Robyn Bollinger, violin, Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello, The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA
• July 8, 2020: Leo Eguchi, cello, Sasha Callahan, violin, Sheffield Chamber Players, online
• August 8, 2020: Leo Eguchi, cello, Sasha Callahan, violin, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, online
• April 18, 2018: Sean Riley, violin, Seth Russell, cello, Turn Up Festival, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
• March 21, 2018: Sean Riley, violin, Seth Russell, cello, University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
• September 19, 2017 (premiere): Johnny Gandelsman, violin, Joshua Roman, cello, Anderson Valley Grange, Boonville, CA