A disembodied viola melody ends this quiet fantasy for orchestra. That’s the main thing to know about EveStar—that it concludes with violas. The piece was written to honor Los Angeles Youth Orchestra Program Director and Viola Coach Eve Cohen who passed away last November, 2012. Eve was simultaneously our gravitational center and guiding star. As her friend Elizabeth Goodman remarked, “Eve was someone who accepted you completely for who you are—and then tried to get you to play viola!”

All the strings in EveStar are muted. From “the heavens,” violins introduce an expressive chorale that melts into a nostalgic melody, perhaps reminiscent of an old opera aria or maybe a Tchaikovsky ballet. This section in turn shifts to a lighter, faster music marked “like hazy sunbeams in a meadow.” These three types of music—the expressive chorale, the sentimental melody, and the meadow music— alternate episodically. Each hold on to the world, but ultimately let go. EveStar ends in a hushed disintegration of violins vibrating even higher than before, and the violas playing the last notes.