This composition is written for standard wind ensemble instrumentation.  Score and parts are available upon request.

Ascent To The Veiled Mountain

Five Country Sketches are a collection of impressions of country life in the rural mid-Atlantic, each movement capturing something of its essence in a momentary glimpse.  The first movement, In the Tall Grass is a moment in late summer.  Life is teaming beneath the visible line of grass gone to seed, blowing in the warm breeze.  Children beat a path through the uncut hinterlands to King Arthur’s Court, King Tut’s tomb or a hidden ballfield.  

The Butterflies of Transylvania County describes the great clouds of butterflies around Western North Carolina in mid-summer, sometimes fluttering around erratically, but then pausing, each as an individual, fanning its wings while resting on a tree branch.  The life of a butterfly is brilliant and  beautiful, but fleeting, and when their time expires, they fall to the ground, lifeless and still, even as the flock is in its frenzied brilliance.  But the flock, too, diminishes, and in time, they, too, are no more.  

Portrait of a Fine Pig is inspired by Jaimie Wyeth’s well-known painting of a pig, now hanging in the Brandywine Museum.  The artist was famously charmed by the personable animal, and even bought her as his own companion after the sitting.  But what is life like for a celebrated beauty in the barnyard?  I imagine a colorful world where the neighbors live a bit too close, everyone knows your business, and you laugh and cry and experience pride and shame all in full view of everyone else.

Fireflies in a Glass Lantern  describes a moment on a warm summer evening in Pennsylvania.  Fireflies, though common, follow their own elusive patterns, sometimes appearing in small numbers, unexpectedly, and sometimes in great, countless abundance.  Children catch them easily, cupping the little insect carefully in their hands.  They gather them in a Mason jar, illuminating the night with their faint, mysterious glow.  But every child knows that this is a joy to be had only in the moment, for as the lights dim, life hangs precariously in the balance.  Before it is too late, he releases the magical visitors back into the darkness of night, where they fly off to places unknown.

The final movement, Among  the Billowing Clouds, imagines winged  flight among the great fluffy castles and dragons soaring endlessly through the air, white and gray formations  against a cobalt blue sky on a blustery spring day in March.

Five Country Sketches Mockup

Requiem for a Drifting Heart is a single movement piece of chamber music written for its premiere performance with the Contemporary Music Collective in Los Angeles, featuring the Lyris Quartet with the addition of flute and harp.

Requiem For A Drifting Heart

This is a short song written for a virtual Stations of the Cross, featuring singer Ashlei Romanowski.

By The Scars

Into a Shadow of All Sounds: An Elegy for Orchestra takes its title from a verse in Percy Shelley’s Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, in which Echo holds the now dead Adonais dearer than the one for whom she pined away “into a shadow of all sounds.”  This composition expresses feelings of grief and loss through ever-shifting and evolving harmonies derived from complementary hexachords juxtaposed with undulating points of stasis.

Five Country Sketches Mockup

dhowell

Related tracks