Chasing Light
for Saxophone Quartet

Traveling to Australia on a direct flight from Dallas to Sydney during the summer of 2018 constituted a seventeen-hour plane ride that began at 10pm at night. (My longest previous air travel from Houston to London was no preparation for this marathon event in the sky!) I fully expected to come back from the trip with inspiration for a new work; after all, this was my first time to visit the continent. What I did not expect was where the inspiration came from – interestingly, because my husband and I left at 10pm at night and traveled westward, and due to the fact that the earth spins eastward, our plane stayed out of the path of the sunlight until we finally arrived in Sydney at 6am. Ever since, I have found my mind drawn to the idea of how this circumstance is physically achieved. Since typically we all experience the daylight and nighttime as the earth makes its daily rotation, my fascination centers around a plane’s ability to move fast enough to not be taken with the atmosphere, but instead, in essence – to chase light.

Chasing Light was funded by my 2019 Saxophone Quartet Consortium, consisting of the following programs:

• Brookhaven College Saxophone Studio – Roy Allen Jr., Director
• Nazareth College Saxophone Quartet – Chisato Eda Marling, Director
• Quantum Quartet – Mark Smith, Director
• The Southern Quartet, Georgia Southern University – Carolyn Bryan, Director
• Stetson University Saxophone Studio – Daniel Ferri, Director
• Texas A&M University Commerce Saxophone Quartet – Chris Beaty, Director
• The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Saxophone Quartet – Cynthia Cripps, Director
• The University of Texas Tyler Saxophone Quartet – Sarah Roberts, Director
• Uproar Duo – Andrew Harrison, Saxophone and Clare Longendyke
• The Young Saxophonist’s Institute – Evan Withner and Zachary Woolhouse, Directors