Tempesta
for Full Orchestra

Tempesta is conceived as a meditation on the slow, inevitable arrival of a storm. Composer Ayça Akın asks performers for smooth, unbroken transitions, particularly in the wind writing, so that the work unfolds as a single, breathing entity. This seamless continuity allows its gestures to feel organic, as though the ensemble itself were inhaling and exhaling. 

Tempesta’s first emergence of tension rises like an omen and gives way to a greater rupture in which the ensemble becomes the storm itself: thunder, lightning, and release, before the music gradually settles back into stillness.

Program Notes

As one reviewer observed, Akın displays “an intuitive understanding of shape and gesture,” and performers are invited to move the sound forward with a subtle, unforced intensity that crests and recedes in long, immersive waves.

Inspired by memories of watching summer storms from a farmhouse porch, Tempesta channels the charged quiet of anticipation, the force of the downpour, and the softening that follows. The work offers an open space for reflection; within its suspended tones and silences, listeners may hear echoes of loss, renewal, or calm, whatever form their own approaching storm may take.