Title: 'Tho Night Be Falling (Elegy-Fantasy)
Commission: 2005
Completed: 2009
Instrumentation: string quartet
Premiere Location: July 2, 2009, in Falmouth, MA
Premiere Ensemble: Colorado Quartet
Notes: Dedicated to the composer’s grandmother Viola Mahnensmith.

Keith Fitch currently heads the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he holds the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition and also directs the CIM New Music Ensemble. Called “gloriously luminous” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, his music has been consistently noted for its eloquence, expressivity, dramatic sense of musical narrative, and unique sense of color and sonority. Reviewing a performance of his work Totem by Wolfgang Sawallisch and The Philadelphia Orchestra (chosen by Maestro Sawallisch to celebrate the orchestra’s centennial), the Wall Street Journal praised “the sheer concentration of his writing, and its power to express a complex, unseen presence shaping the course of musical events.” The American Academy of Arts and Letters has said, “[his] music reveals an individual landscape that concentrates on unusual textures and sounds—all within a strong narrative that drives to towards a rich and powerful conclusion.”

His works have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia by such ensembles and soloists as The Philadelphia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, the League of Composers Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Colorado Quartet, the Da Capo Chamber Players, percussionist James Preiss, Yolanda Kondonasiss and Jason Vieaux, and many others. Additionally, his music has been heard at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the June in Buffalo Festival, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and New York’s Carnegie and Merkin Halls, among others, and in university settings nationwide. Recent works include a Piano Quartet, “Last Words;” The Range of Light, a setting of texts by John Muir, commissioned by the Rocky Ridge Music Center to celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary; Three English Sonnets, a solo flute work for Joshua Smith, principal flute of The Cleveland Orchestra; and Ruthless Voicings, commissioned by the No Exit ensemble to mark its tenth anniversary season.