Trumpet Concerto and Orchestra
(world premiere on May 18, 2025)
Text by the composer Anne Victorino d’Almeida – May 6, 2025
The Trumpet Concerto and Orchestra, dedicated to Paul Merkelo, arises from three profoundly significant events in my life.
The first was the fortunate meeting with Paul in 2022, in Lisbon. The musical affinity that quickly blossomed awakened our mutual desire to celebrate it through the work that premieres today. Music has this extraordinary power to bring people together, create bonds, strengthen human relationships, mark time, and enrich memories.
This concerto is also my opus 100, a milestone that allows me to look back and acknowledge how beautiful and challenging this journey has been, with deep gratitude to all the musicians who have performed and championed my music with such generosity.
Finally, I hesitated a lot — really a lot — before sharing what ultimately marked the creative process of this concerto. Some stories we keep to ourselves, for their intimacy and what they represent in our lives, but I have now decided to tell it.
I began writing this piece in May 2023, full of motivation, with the structure of the concerto already outlined. The double bar of the first movement was placed on July 3 of that year. Nothing predicted that, the very next day, July 4, I would receive the news that illness would take my mother away within a few months.
It wasn’t just the structure of the work that crumbled. It was the heart, the soul, the discernment, a love that grew as hope faded, along with the anxiety of the day when that phone number, which I dialed every day, would cease to exist. The keys had a sound, notes that formed a melody I was used to hearing daily.
And so the second movement was born, far from any formal structure, guided only by the longing for the present and a simple call. After the introduction of the bells, the trumpet melody, later developed by the orchestra, corresponds to the succession of the keys that made up her phone number.
The third movement expresses an obsession, a whirlwind desperately searching for some kind of therapy to overcome this life’s stumble.
My mother still managed to hear the MIDI version of the piece. At the edge of her strength, she smiled and said: “C’est bien.”
Photo: Anne Victorino d’Almeida
© João Vasco