Full recording available for streaming on Apple Music and Spotify and for purchase at Neuma Records and iTunes
Duration: 8'30"
Commissioned by the Galan Trio
This relatively brief work is a personal reflection on change.
At the time this piece was composed, many changes were occurring both in the world and in my life. The world was beginning to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic; my daughter was preparing to move away from my home; and after four years of service, I had stepped down as the Director of the School of Music at Georgia State University and returned to the faculty. On a more deeply personal level, this piece was also completed near the two-year anniversary of my beloved wife, Maria’s death. It is that last milestone to which the title of this composition refers. During the grieving process, I have come to realize that Maria’s passing was not only the death of a monumentally significant person in my life but also marked the death of the future I had envisioned for myself. This realization compounded my deep sense of loss.
However, just as the world is slowly starting to rebuild itself after the pandemic into something new, I have slowly begun to rebuild my life into something also unavoidably new. I believe that something must inevitably follow the death of the tomorrow I had envisioned with Maria. In the modest confines of this composition, I have tried to work out my feelings and capture in music two emotional states I find myself in during this time of change: an unease about my new, unexpected future and a nascent but growing optimism about where I may go from here.