Performance by Gregory Fulkerson, violin; Thomas Rosenkranz, piano

Gregory Fulkerson writes:

Andrew Shapiro is a composer and songwriter living in Brooklyn. I first met him during his senior year at Oberlin when he acted as an audio assistant for my 1998 Merkin Hall concert in New York. I reconnected with him by chance in 2012, and we discussed working together to develop a violin sonata.

I love the forthright and amiable spirit that permeates the piece; it is definitely in a pop style, yet he handles the standard acoustic sonorities deftly and there is a wealth of detail in the patterns of the violin. I don’t know anything else quite like it.
 

Andrew Shapiro writes:

Shortly after The High Line opened, a friend of mine was running the High Line Ranger program and needed people to patrol the park and answer visitor questions. I thought this could be a very interesting way to learn about the place. So I just sort of fell into a job as a High Line Ranger and worked there every Saturday for a year.

When there weren’t huge mobs of people around (and it wasn’t absolutely freezing), I often found myself near the top of the Gansevoort stairs contemplating the view of the river. After a while I got the idea to write a few sweet and simple pieces of music about it at different times of the day.