I met Christopher Cerrone in 2005 at the Manhattan School of Music, but I first played his music in 2009. We did the overture to his opera Invisible Cities, a spellbinding piece that would go on to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Fast-forward to 2012 – I heard that Owen Weaver was putting together a consortium of percussionists to commission Chris to write a solo piece, and I jumped at the opportunity to join them. The result was Memory Palace - a 20-minute autobiographical piece about the people, places, and things that came together to turn Chris into the person and artist that he is today.
I first played the piece in 2013, and since then have given more than 35 performances of it. I keep coming back to it, because I have never connected this personally and this emotionally to any other solo percussion piece. In going through the different periods of Chris’ past, his music inspires me to reflect on my own life in the same way.