I have had the opportunity on several occasions to compose celebratory works for the opening of new facilities, but when Kurt Kissinger asked me to write a piece for the new performing arts center in Algona, Iowa, I quickly discovered that this was a unique project. Although their new building is attached to the high school, it is in every way a center for the entire community to share and it was stressed to me how much everyone in the community had come together to make the project a reality. As I searched for potential inspiration that might give identity to this unique commission, I came across the quote “The heart that gives, gathers,” which has been variously attributed to Lao Tzu, Marianne Moore, James Howell, Ruth Little, and Hannah More. Wherever the quote originated, it was immediately striking to me due to its beautiful sentiment suggesting that our own hearts grow through the act of sharing with others.

This quote became the genesis for the piece, implying music that was gentle, sweet, and caring. My imagination immediately heard piano and mallet colors as dominant voices for the piece and those instruments appear as featured timbres throughout the work, with the first two measures of the initial piano melody forming the pitch material for much of the melodic and harmonic aspects of the piece. Structurally, the piece is a loose rondo (ABACA), although the intervening sections are all inspired by the original A material and each iteration of the A material is slightly different. In this way, the whole piece seems to unfold organically, gradually growing to encompass the entire community of the band with each voice contributing its own part of the whole, both giving and gathering.

The Heart That Gives was commissioned by Kurt Kissinger and the Algona Community High School Band (Algona, IA) and dedicated to the opening of the Ed & Betty Wilcox Performing Arts Center, Algona, IA.