New work for solo piano, performed in Distler Hall by John McDonald at the October 24, 2025, Tufts Composers New at Noon concert "Sonic Geo-Detection: Recovering Time and Place." "Far Away / In the West" refracts elements of a hymn I learned as a child in Utah, the Sacred Harp tune "All Is Well" that Mormon pioneers adapted into "Come, Come Ye Saints," the most enduring song about their exodus to the Mountain West. It also pays tribute obliquely to Leroy Robertson (1896–1971), the Utah composer whose Brucknerian orchestration of this hymn, which I heard on my mother’s Mormon Tabernacle Choir records, introduced me to the way harmonic changes can dramatically transform the mood of a tune.
