Program Note:   

Ned Rorem and Daron Hagen were friends for forty years. Their association began as teacher and pupil in 1982, when Rorem, a freshly minted faculty member of the Curtis Institute of Music, accepted Hagen as one of his first students. (Hagen joined the faculty himself briefly, from 1996-98.) After Hagen graduated, he worked for Rorem for several years as his copyist. For the rest of Rorem’s life, they remained confidants and staunch supporters of each other’s work; both write movingly of the other in their published memoirs. First performed by Thomas Piercy, clarinet, with Judith Olson, piano at the Barge, Brooklyn, New York, on October 18th, 2013, the piece was composed for Mr. Piercy at his request in honor of Rorem's 90th birthday. The title, Early, Later refers to Rorem's 1955 famous setting of the poem Early in the Morning, by Robert Hillyer, composed near the beginning of Rorem’s career, a few measures of which Hagen alludes to in his moving portrait of his friend in his “later” years.