From the recording Threaded Sky
Grammy winner Augusta Read Thomas was born in New York. At age 23 she became the youngest woman recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. Thomas has held Professorships at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Eastman University, and was appointed Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chair of the Board of the American Music Center, and named one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her composition Astral Canticle. “... All art that I cherish has an element of love and recklessness and desperation. I like music that is alive and jumps off the page and out of the instrument as if something big is at stake.”
Double Helix was written in 2011 for the dedication of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago. It was originally scored for two violins and in 2007 published by the composer for violin and viola. For the original two violin premiere the composer wrote: “.... Virtuosic, capricious and heartfelt, this music combines and transforms motivic materials that are simultaneously majestic and ornamental. Baroque-like with arabesques and trills, the Tribute swirls through auras including lyrical, ardent, fluid, impassioned and ablaze with energy. Akin to a double helix, both parts are equally virtuosic; likewise, each violinist serves as protagonist as well as a fulcrum point on and around which the other player's musical force-fields rotate, bloom and proliferate.”