Gala Flagello (b. 1994) has made her mark on music in several different ways. She co-founded and directs Connecticut Summerfest, an annual contemporary music festival. She teaches privately and in classroom settings, notably at the University of Michigan, where she also received her masters and doctorate degrees (she also has a bachelors degree from the Hartt School). She is primarily known as a composer. Her prolific output encompasses chamber music, choirs, orchestra, band, and more. Her music has won her many commissions and awards, including fellowships at Tanglewood, Aspen, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy. And this is just the beginning for her. See more at her website (which also includes her thoughtfully-curated reading list), the University of Michigan, Wikipedia, and the Wind Repertory Project.
Flagello sums up 2024’s Love and Nature in her program notes (from her website, to which I’ve added links):
Love & Nature (2024) was commissioned by a consortium of wind bands led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and explores how love prevails through cosmic lore, social movements, and mercurial mythos. Each of the work’s three movements connect a different instrumental sound world to the concepts of earth, air, and fire, depicting a blossoming of kindness and hope for the future of our planet. The first movement, “Flower Power,” is inspired by the titular social movement of the 1960s–1970s and sonically critiques the juxtaposition of fragility and strength, beauty and utility, and nonviolence and force. “Flower Power” reflects the ethos of Marc Riboud’s iconic photograph The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet and incorporates a musical Easter egg—a countermelody for counterculture. The second movement, “Star-Crossed,” summons the hope, whimsy, and longing of its ill-fated protagonists through celestial textures and luminous scoring. The third and final movement, “Slow Burn,” explores both versions of the titular literary trope—romantic and anger-fueled—through the arboraceous lens of controlled fire, an originally indigenous practice that mitigates the drought-driven effects of climate change. “Slow Burn” foregrounds bright and wooden sounds to pay homage to our forests and the necessity of ecological restoration.
Special thanks to Kim Fleming, Christi Blahnik, Rachel Zephir, Ashley Killam, Ancel “Fitz” Neeley, Michael Avitabile, Sagar Anupindi, Allison Chu, and Hannah Hickman for their guidance during the writing of this work. And Pete Williams: to the moon and back. Endless gratitude to the bands whose support has made Love & Nature a reality.
Listen and follow the score in this video:
Let’s unpack this a little. First, there is a podcast episode dedicated to the photo from the first movement:
Second, the “ill-fated protagonists” of the second movement are Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here’s an overheated scene from the 1996 movie version that captures that tension especially well:
Finally, here is a brief story on controlled burns, which Flagello references in the third movement: