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ave maria, interlude (with miguel)

About 10 years ago, my sister Jayci and I went to see Kristin Chenoweth perform in Broken Arrow and in the middle of her set, she announced the next song which was to be a Stephen Foster song.  I appreciate what Stephen Foster means to the American Songbook, but I'm not a huge fan, per se. 

This song was different - it had a message of hope, longing for unity, and a beautiful melody.  Written in 1854, in the days leading up to the Civil War, he paints a picture of the times:

"While we seek mirth and beauty 
And music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, 
Their pleading looks will say:
Oh! Hard times come again no more!"

I fell in love with this song and its message and have always wanted to set it for Band - but nothing ever came of it, until earlier this week when I was inspired to finally sit down and do it. 

"'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh! Hard times come again no more!"

I hope you enjoy:  A Sigh of the Weary

A Sigh Of The Weary

This massive (and recent) work for a 9 person chamber ensemble took me about 6 months and was inspired by my love of astronomy, specifically the Voyager probes and their mission beyond the solar system. Here's my program note for the piece:

During the height of the space race in the 1960s and 70s, NASA was presented with a rare opportunity that only occurs once every 175 years: the outer planets had aligned in such a way that a spacecraft could use their gravity to slingshot between each planet in a single trip. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to finally visit the largest and most distant members of our solar system, the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were launched in 1977 and flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, taking plenty of iconic pictures of the gas giants and their moons along the way.

With their primary mission complete, the two Voyager probes embarked on a new, far more uncertain path: they were to leave the solar system and cross into interstellar space. And in 2012, they were successful, with Voyager 1 cementing its status as the most distant manmade object from Earth. This monumental moment in human scientific advancement led me to ponder what it truly means to “leave” our solar system, and what it would be like for any human to undergo such a “voyage.” Thus, my Solar Sonata was born: a dramatized musical account of the one-way passage into the endless void between the stars. For our fictional astronaut, the journey is quite exciting and filled with many cosmic wonders: the dark, frozen worlds of the Kuiper Belt, the termination shock that marks the end of our sun’s energetic influence, and the interstellar medium itself. But for the Voyager probes, their signal growing weaker and more distant by the day, the reality is unfathomably cold, empty, and lonely. Yet forever they sail on into the infinite.

Voyager was commissioned and premiered by the 2023-24 MSM Tactus chamber ensemble at their yearly concert on April 12th, 2024, in Neidorff-Karpati Hall, Manhattan School of Music.
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