Instrumentation: saxophone quartet (SATB)

Duration: 8’30”

Premiere: Dr. Sean Fredenburg @ the North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Region 1 Conference (virtual)—April 2021

Program notes

A jumble of images and emotions were in my mind while writing the piece: autumn sunshine spearing through clouds, peeling bells, swirling leaves, playfulness, change, light and darkness, loss, old sorrow, anger, pain, reconciliation, healing. For me, this range of images and emotions captures much of the journey I and many of those close to me have been on in the last year (2020): hopeful for change; stunned by human capacity for optimism, compassion, long-suffering, internal contradiction, carelessness, willful ignorance, and malice; desiring to heal what divides, to right what is wrong, to reconcile who we say we are with who we've been.

The music's spirit is playful and optimistic, at first innocently and by the end in full view and knowledge of the darkness and shadow we've collectively endured in the last year. The piece cycles through its musical material four times, each rotation beginning with the tolling chords that start the work. Each rotation then responds to those before it in its own way.