Legacy (for horn and piano) (2017)

Composer note
In the months following President Barack Obama’s farewell address in Chicago, I began to turn my thoughts to composing this new horn concerto for tonight’s premiere at the Grant Park Festival.

The President’s inspiring summation of the last eight years of our history rests incongruously next to the daily turmoil that has taken hold since then. A great deal has been written about ideal of the former President’s “legacy”: a commitment to protect our air, water, health, children… which, since then is being torn down, many pieces at a time, every single day.

As a creative artist, I think frequently about what I will be able to pass on to my family, and to our world, as I spend my life attempting to create works of beauty, healing, confrontation and ideas. Building, not destroying. I hope my children will appreciate and take part in giving their best to the world that we live in together.

This concerto is both an abstract work made up of themes presented in harmonious and conflicting relationships, and equally a record of personal emotions and thoughts transformed into those ideas and into sound.

Legacy is commissioned jointly by the Grant Park Festival and the Liverpool Symphony Orchestra (UK) for their principal hornists Jon Boen and Timothy Jackson. It is dedicated to President Barack Obama to honor his humanity, humility, intelligence and inspiration as the nation’s former leader.


1. Introduction – Echo
    Act of Will – Intenso, Allegro
2. Divided – Adagio
3. Echoes… of Grace

— Aaron Jay Kernis