Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni
Allison Loggins-Hull was born November 27, 1982, in Chicago, IL, and lives in Montclair, New Jersey. She composed her Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni on a commission from The Knights, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Music Director, and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She conceived the flute solo for Knights flutist Alex Sopp, who gave the premiere with The Knights on December 8, 2024, with the Knights led by Eric Jacobsen in a Peoples’ Symphony Concert at Town Hall, New York City. Seattle Symphony Orchestra Principal Flute Demarre McGill gave the West Coast premiere performances June 19, 21, and 22, 2025, with that orchestra under Xian Zhang’s direction. First BSO performances: January 15-17, 2026, Lorna McGhee, soloist, Andris Nelsons conducting.
The score of Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni calls for solo flute with a small orchestra: 1 each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, and trombone; 1 percussionist (glockenspiel, wind chimes, tambourine, tom-toms, kick bass drum), and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
Allison Loggins-Hull wrote the following comments about her Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni at the time of its 2024 premiere:
Flutist and dear friend Alex Sopp sparked the initial conversation between myself and the chamber orchestra The Knights about creating a Rhapsody for Flute and Orchestra, set to premiere during the 100th anniversary season of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
Alex, who envisioned this partnership and brought the piece to life at its premiere, was also my muse throughout the compositional process. Not only is she one of the most extraordinary flutists of our time, she is also an exceptional singer and songwriter. Her voice and musicality often remind me of the great Joni Mitchell, whose music has been a lifeline and a profound influence on me. With both Alex and Joni as personal inspirations, it was natural to channel their spirits into the vibrant and jubilant nature of a traditional rhapsody.
As the project grew, the Seattle Symphony and Boston Symphony joined as co-commissioners, adding even more excitement to this collaboration. With the onboarding of additional renowned flutists and ensembles, I felt particularly inspired to nod to traditional styles and repertoire of virtuosic flute playing, while also leaning into modern and popular musical language, as Gershwin does in his Rhapsody in Blue.
Although Loggins-Hull references and was inspired by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the long tradition of creating a new work based on an earlier one is reflected prominently in another Gershwin work, his Variations on I Got Rhythm for piano and orchestra, which uses his own famous song as its source material. The tradition is far older than that, traceable at least to the Medieval era, when composers based Mass settings on secular song melodies. J.S. Bach’s radical recomposing of Vivaldi concertos, Franz Liszt’s “paraphrases” of music from the operas of Mozart and other composers, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Duke Ellington’s reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker are further examples. These works demonstrate, among other things, not only their composers’ admiration for (or realization of the potential in) their source music, but also the deep satisfaction, even joy, that they experienced in the process of creation.
We can observe that love of music itself in Allison Loggins-Hull’s music, and especially in this exuberant Rhapsody. As a highly accomplished flutist herself, Loggins-Hull infuses into her compositions, whether for flute or for orchestra, her delight in performance. She developed her personal style as a composer and out-of-the-box performer in part through her years partnering with flutist/composer Nathalie Joachim in the innovative flute-and-electronics duo Flutronix. Flutronix aimed to dissolve barriers between classical, avant-garde, and popular music not only in the music itself but in their performances, which incorporated theatrical and lighting elements, and which often took place in non-traditional venues. Frequently these days, Loggins-Hull performs her own works with traditional ensembles and in traditional spaces, as well. (This week she was featured in a portrait concert of her works with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Boston Athenaeum as part of our E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One festival.)
Loggins-Hull’s three-year tenure as the Cleveland Orchestra’s Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow culminated at the end of the 2024-25 season with the premiere performances of her orchestral work Grit. Grace. Glory., a work that aptly illustrates her collaborative, social-minded spirit. Creating the piece over several years, she incorporated music she developed through working with the young people of the Cleveland School of the Arts. She is also Resident Artistic Director of the New Jersey Symphony in the 2025-26 season. The breadth of her musical interests encompasses projects with the pop star (and flutist) Lizzo, with whom she performed at the Grammys and the Met Gala; performing as flutist in the ensemble for the soundtrack of The Lion King, and composing the score for a documentary about the dancer Maurice Hines. She has also worked with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, International Contemporary Ensemble, Imani Winds, and many other ensembles.
Many of Loggins-Hull’s works are responses to and contemplations of the challenges faced by society today and throughout history, such as in her Homeland for flute solo, composed following Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico, and its orchestral corollary Can You See? Both works question the idea of an American identity that dismisses whole populations based on social status, race, or geography. The Pattern for ensemble is a condemnation of systems perpetuating the oppression of Black Americans. Her chamber work Persist is an acknowledgement of the resilience of her ancestors as they suffered oppression, slavery, and disenfranchisement; but the piece also recognizes that those experiences helped pave the way for her own successes. This hints at a fundamental, but nuanced, optimism that is evident especially in her most recent works, including Grit. Grace. Glory. and Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni.
The Canadian-born Joni Mitchell is among the great songwriters in the English language. She started out in the milieu of the 1960s folk explosion alongside folk-rock acts including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, but was driven to explore much further afield, eventually collaborating with jazz greats Jaco Pastorius and Charles Mingus. Many of her songs have reached the status of American standards, popular far beyond their first generation of listeners.
Mitchell’s song “My Old Man,” the source for Loggins-Hull’s Rhapsody, is from her 1971 album Blue, widely considered one of the greatest pop albums of all time. Although there are a few guitar-based songs like those that dominated her earlier work, Blue is notable for its shift to piano as the central instrument in the title track, the well-known “River,” and “My Old Man,” all of which expand on harmonic explorations and chromatic melodies already present in such songs as “Songs to Aging Children Come” and “The Fiddle and the Drum” from her previous album, Clouds, and which would further enrich her music in the following decade.
In addition to the warm emotional expression of “My Old Man,” the song’s melodic and harmonic quirks piqued Allison Loggins-Hull’s interest, providing her with easily audible hooks that keep Mitchell’s music present even through the radical changes of texture in her piece. For example, the last note in the song’s second phrase, “He’s a walker in the rain, he’s a dancer in the dark,” is a somewhat unexpected flattened 7th of the scale. The next line has an even more characteristic figure that recurs in other contexts: in “We don’t need no piece of paper from the City Hall,” “from the City” is set to a chromatic scale fragment. This tiny figure is the main tile of the mosaic texture of strings and bassoon that opens the Rhapsody. The falling minor third-major second Mitchell sings for the words “My old man…” is another recognizable motif. The song’s second section (“But when he’s gone, me and the lonesome blues collide”) adds further surprising harmonic details and brings a bittersweet change of mood.
All this is material for Loggins-Hull’s journey through Mitchell’s song. Even as she amplifies Mitchell’s jubilance and melancholy, though, she provides the flute soloist with difficult, virtuosic, brilliant passages that take full advantage of the instrument’s range of colors and athletic flexibility, such as rapid, patterned arpeggios, quick changes in timbre, tremolos, and virtual counterpoint, culminating in a solo cadenza. The soloist fits into an orchestral texture of bright patterns and colors (taffeta patterns in colored arrangements?) that complement without overwhelming. Throughout all this breathless brilliance, Loggins-Hull remains true to the extraordinary range and lyricism of Mitchell’s original melody.
Following the premiere of the Rhapsody in December 2024, Loggins-Hull returned to its music for her chamber music piece Rhapsody Remixed, which she premiered with members of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra at the time of its performances of Rhapsody on Theme by Joni. She reprised that work with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Boston Athenaeum on January 13, 2026, as part of the BSO's E Pluribus Unum festival.
Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Program Publications.