This is a piece for orchestra I wrote back in the second half of high school (2004 approximately). Back then I was in this sort of Disney/John Williams/Aram Khatchaturian phase. Looking back at this from a much more advanced perspective I can clearly see the influences of these composers.

This piece is pretty self explanatory... all the cute woodland critters in the woods being all nice to each other, everything is great, not a trouble in sight...

This is the first of two orchestra pieces from high school that I'm uploading. I went through a timeline of my music, and started from my most recent pieces back down to the earliest ones I still have saved. My pieces still go back further but there comes a point where they're so bad they're just not worth it anymore. However, these two pieces that I am uploading have a lot of value to my life that I only just now began to realize. Normally I'd look at this and sort of accept the fact that it was a step in my development to become a composer, and that this piece is no longer any good for anything but a stepping stone to where I am now, but there is something striking I didn't realize.

This music was sort of my escape from my life in high school, which was one of the darkest times of my life. Without getting into too much detail, I was on a path that would have led me to become another street criminal in LA. I was with the wrong crowd, I did not have my values set, and was an angry and troublesome teen. Around the third year of high school, the school concert band hired a new director who really made us sound good, and thanks to this professor as well as support from my French professor, and my elders who turned me toward my culture, I started to turn away from drugs and being a wannabe gangster. I also took on composing. My time spent composing music like this was time I was not spending on the streets, which helped me to improve my life. This music was also a real escape for me, because turning away from everything I was would not be easy socially. I would still continue to be ridiculed and from time to time pushed around and beaten by those who were formerly my fellow wannabe gang brothers. While I look at this now and can laugh at it, at the time, writing music like this was a way to imagine a place that didn't exist in my world, a safe haven full of cute animals who would support me in this transition. This is why this piece is relevant to my life, and now I can see it. I now have many friends to rely on, and my teachers, my elders, and many support groups I have gained along the way. My music has sort of inverted itself, and now that things have gotten better for me, I write music about the difficulties of that past lifestyle. I see this positively, its the story of my life, and I was writing it without even realizing it. Enjoy everyone!

Instrumentation:
3 Flutes
3 Oboes
3 Clarinets
3 Bassons

4 Horns
3 Trumpets
3 Trombones
1 Tuba

Timpani

Percussion: Triangle, Bass Drum, Crash Cymbals, Bells, Guiro, Claves

Harp

Violins I
Violins II
Violas
Cellos
Contrabasses