Here's a piece I wrote for Cello, Saxophone, and Piano. Enjoy!

Here's some tentative program notes:

Shadows

When an object blocks a lightsource, a shadow is created. It’s a simple concept that everything adheres too. Everything has a shadow, from the tallest buildings to the smallest of atoms. But shadows have always been a metaphor for evil, cruelty, coldness, and even death. When the groundhog sees its shadow, Spring is supposedly delayed and the bitterness of Winter is extended. When a person becomes a shadow of their former self, it means they have changed for the worse.

The working title for this piece was “Tripping over One’s Self”; a piece about inspiration, doubtfulness, overthinking, underthinking, and the general feeling of being lost in plain sight. As time progressed during the writing of this piece, new concepts had been introduced brought on by my mental state at the time. The title “Shadows” was chosen after watching the shadows of the clouds after a rain storm move across the land. The shadows themselves were only projections of what was above. Yet the shadow on the ground and the clouds casting them miles away had an ethereal connection. The shadow could only conform to the object casting it.

I do not think shadows do not represent darkness, but rather, willpower. To become a shadow of one’s self is to lose willpower. The loss of the ability to move without persuasion by the caster. To lose direction, and simply follow commands made by the persona you are bound to.

This piece’s three movements are connected through different melodic and rhythmic motives. “Lurking” is a darker, rhythmically driven movement, evoking a feeling of directionless movement; moving with the shadows, while still stumbling and tripping. “Crawling” is a mellow, atmospheric movement, about the stretching and contorting of shadows during dusk. The last movement “Consuming” is a flowing, melodic movement that takes a dark turn, developing and consuming the trance-like textures and moving melodies set forth by the first two movements.