Kyle Peter Rotolo

photo credit: Jay Eagleson

Kyle Peter Rotolo is a multi-faceted musician who grew up and still resides in River Vale, New Jersey, just across from the City That Never Sleeps.  2012 was an exciting year for Kyle.  It saw the premiere of Marilyn’s Room, a mini-opera on his own story and libretto, by the Peabody Opera Company, as well as the album release of his sonatine for solo guitar Le crâne a lá cigarette qui fume on the album Epitaphios by the lauded guitarist Anastasios Comanescu. In 2013, Kyle’s String Quartet No. 1: Macchiato was recorded by the New England String Quartet and released on the album Perceptions: Points of View for Small Ensemble (Navona Records NV5909).  He has been awarded the Ada Arens Morawetz Memorial Award in Composition, third prize in the Prix d’Ete chamber music composition competition (both from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University), and was a finalist in both the BMI Student Composer Awards and the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

Kyle is an alumnus of the Peabody Institute (M.M., 2013), Pepperdine University (B.A., 2009), the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and a member of Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society.  His mentors have been Kevin Puts, Liviu Marinescu, and N. Lincoln Hanks.  He has also studied privately with Samuel Adler, Francois Paris, and David Dzubay.  Kyle wishes to thank Peabody Institute and their director, Dr. Jeffrey Sharkey, for supporting him with two Peabody Career Development Grants.

Apophis:
N.A.S.A. experienced a brief period of deep consternation in December 2004 when scientists discovered a half-mile-wide asteroid on what was then thought to be a collision course with Earth. They named the asteroid “Apophis” after the mythological enemy of the Egyptian sun-god Ra. While N.A.S.A. has since reneged on their prediction that Apophis would collide with our planet within the next 30 years, the possibility of total annihilation still looms over our heads in some way.

I do not often use doom and gloom as inspiration for my music, but when I heard Stephen Hawking recount this harrowing tale on an episode of his Discovery channel miniseries “Into the Universe,” I could not help but conjure a musical reaction in my mind’s ear. The resulting piece is this eight-minute tour-de-force for orchestra in a moto perpetuo style, as the asteroid comes barreling toward its celestial target with immeasurable force.