Vocalise is excerpted from my Oboe Concerto. I wrote the Oboe Concerto for my dear friend Virginia McDowell, whose sensitive, thoughtful playing was the inspiration for every note of the piece. The Vocalise is the most personal movement of the concerto; it is a memory of the sort of tuneful lines I wrote for Virginia when we first met. Scored only for oboe and piano, it is an intimate love song between two musicians, a quiet refuge surrounded by extroverted movements full of bold orchestral effects.