Rhea Fowler & Micaela Tobin

“A City Upon A Hill”

”A City Upon A Hill?” is our reaction to the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The main theme is based on the infamous slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ in which each variation of the Americana-inspired theme becomes increasingly dissonant on the arrival of the word ‘again.’ Distorted and detuned electronic samples of politicians chanting the phrase, combined with sounds of protest, police helicopters, and stampeding animals circle and crowd the violin solo, culminating in a frenzied, sonic chaos that inevitably collapses in on itself.

The sonic dissonance is meant to echo the cognitive dissonance of the far-right movement itself, as the piece chronicles the gradual radicalization of an individual who holds an idealized, nostalgic memory of a freedom and equality that has never truly existed in America; someone who believes themselves to be a true patriot while simultaneously undermining basic democratic values and American institutions.

The piece ends with the violin soloist slowly unraveling their D-string until their sound fades into obscurity. So, in this gaping silence of this detuned violin, we ask you, was America ever really great? óRhea Fowler & Micaela Tobin

“City Upon a Hill?” was generously commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County (Irvine, CA)