Love Returns (2024)

Joan Tower composed Love Returns, a concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra, for soloist Steven Banks. In Banks, Tower found an ideal collaborator. Following a visit to her home in Red Hook, NY, the two stayed in close communication over many months as the piece found its balance of technical brilliance and heartfelt expression. The idea for the concerto was initiated by conductor Peter Oundjian, one of Tower’s closest collaborators, who led the premiere performances with Banks at the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, CO, on July 10-11, 2025. He had previously led the premieres of Tower’s A New Day and Suite from Concerto for Orchestra.

An international consortium of orchestras led by the Colorado Music Festival supported the creation of Love Returns; the other commissioners are the National Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and School, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Love Returns is built on a theme from Love Letter, Tower’s brief but poignant solo piano piece that she dedicated to her late husband Jeff Litfin, who died in 2022 at the age of 95. “I played Love Letter for a lot of people because I was rehearsing it for a TEDx talk,” she said. “People loved the piece. I've never had quite such a visceral reaction to anything that I did.”

Love Returns is cast as a theme and variations in six sections. Tower initially questioned whether the theme from Love Letter would make sense in this new context. “I started thinking, ‘What does this concerto have to do with my relationship to my husband of 50 years?’ Well, any relationship is up and down, and you go through various trials and various wonderful periods. This piece is sort of like that. It keeps coming back to this love theme.”

Its main theme is built on a series of rising-fifth intervals. After a slow and reflective opening section, the theme is transformed through various textures and contexts. Each section is faster than the previous one, except the fifth, a solo cadenza for the saxophone. In the presto finale, the soloist darts and weaves through a string of orchestral commentary.