The concerto resulted from a challenge to create a work programmable alongside the venerable Bach Double, and, while the soloists might be virtuosi, the orchestra would be at the intermediate level of a  college or community symphony. Restrictions get ideas flowing, and these in particular struck me as

worthy and honorable.  

About three weeks after I began, the concerto was complete, although I continued fussing with details.  I imagined the sound resulting from the orchestral sextuplets in the first movement, for example. as blurs like water in a fountain. (In a professional orchestra I knew those blurs would be more clearly articulated and thus lose something.) Yet what was not possible to turn loose in the orchestra, I was able to give to the soloists. I can hear the quick runs of the last movement, articulated at the very edge of comprehensibility, or the subtle shifts in timbre as the tune is tossed between the soloists in the slow movement.

I also wanted to write something enjoyable by everyone, the audience, the  performers, and the composer alike.  To that end, I deconstructed familiar gestures, reconstructing them led only by my whimsy.  Hence the subtitle, “Hey! Haven’t I Heard That Before?”