Legacies

At the start of life, all doors are flung open wide. Every future is possible, every choice presents itself. So begins Legacies, naïve, jittery, excited, imbued with a sense of wonder and expectation.

Later in life there is more time to reflect inwardly upon the choices made, and things happen more deliberately; this introspection marks the middle slower section of the work. This is the core of the composition, its emotional center, representing the desire to remain where one is in life, versus the flux of life that pulls one forward into new experience. But the elemental spheres spin out energy in all directions, illuminating new pathways, propelling and pulling us ahead in time and in continual choice. These possibilities -- these sound-pictures of what is yet to come -- make up the last section. Here the opening music returns, but more complex, more layered, more harmonically gritty. Then, in a final burst of energy, the primary and secondary themes elide to create a joyous climax of forward momentum.

Program Note by composer