Creative   •   January 30, 2020

A great way to start the year! I was commissioned to write a work for the Florida Middle School All State Band, and attended the premiere at the 2020 Florida Music Educators Association Convention in Tampa.

A huge thank you to conductor, Michael Garasi, and all 130 students in the band for playing the first performance of the work, which I entitled HIM. HIM stands for Harvey, Irma and Maria –  which were the three strongest storms of the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season. It was a bit surreal to work with this group, as it brought back memories from 20 years ago when I played in the Texas All State Band. When I was writing HIM, I was looking for a correlation between Texas and Florida, maybe subconsciously because of my own memories from All State. I don’t think I’ll ever forget playing in that band, which was conducted by Maestro Anthony Maiello. We played Twelve Seconds to the Moon by Robert W. Smith and the concert is still in my mind and memory one of the best musical experiences of my life. So, when I was writing for the group in Florida I definitely felt a profound sense of responsibility. I wanted to contribute in creating an artistic, challenging and meaningful experience for the students.

So, I decided a musical expression of a hurricane, in remembrance of the greatly disastrous 2017 storm season fit the bill. After all, music has the power to communicate, help us remember and express deep emotion. I asked the students during rehearsal how many of them or their families where impacted by Hurricane Irma and quite a few of their hands went up. In case you might need a refresher – the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest on record, with a damage total close to $300 billion (USD). The sequence of storms was extremely deadly, resulting in over 3,000 fatalities and countless injuries. Harvey, Irma and Maria occurred during August and September of that year, and battered parts of Texas, Louisiana, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Cuba, and Florida, among other territories. The works simulates a strong hurricane blowing in and then out, as a respite representing the eye of the storm then takes center stage. The storm then returns stronger, before moving on its way into the distance.

In writing the work I contemplated what it would be like to experience a strong hurricane, particularly during the period in the eye of the storm, and I was reminded of an early childhood memory when I encountered a tornado for the first time. I was a typical Texas kid – sitting in the back of my mom’s minivan with my two siblings. As we were driving on a highway over the lake to our home, the sky turned an eerie, greenish tint and the atmosphere increasingly became very still and quiet. My mom said to look over the lake in the distance – and sure enough, a dark twister was slowly expanding from the sky toward the earth below. I remember the feeling of angst for the people in the path of the great vortex, coupled with the awe of truly one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen – resulting in an intense cognitive dissonance in my mind. It’s the closest personal experience I can use to relate to the beauty and terror of the eye.

In the music, I decided to use a familiar hymn, partially due to the word hymn being a homonym of the title HIM, but also since in some of history’s worst circumstances many hymns were written. I chose Great is Thy Faithfulness whose text reflects the words of Lamentations 3:22-23, written during a time when famine was severe and cannibalism was rampant in Jerusalem:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

His mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

A huge thank you to the Florida Bandmasters Association and Commissioning Chair Brian Dell for the opportunity to write the work! It was great and memorable experience to be among the invited composers and conductors this year.