mvmt. 1 - "Ides of March"
mvmt. 2 - Bonny of Morn"
mvmt. 3 - "Recompense"
mvmt. 4 - "A Savior in Ourselves"

 The title of this suite is Last Year of Youth, and the original concept was that a last year of youth is a singular event or a singular period of time that changes your life forever in some way—good or bad. And it matures you, it changes you.

At the time that I was writing this, it was 2019, 2020. So I was coming to the end of my bachelor's in 2020, and I had just gone through a really rough time in my life midway through college, a lot of things were changing. And then March 2020 happens, and we all know what happened that month. And yeah, so that kind of takes me to the first movement, Ides of March.

The first movement was inspired by a Shostakovich prelude that was transcribed for band. So in March 2020, on the Ides of March is the idea of paying a debt. In Roman society, you had to settle your debt by March 15th. Here's the timeline of announcements in March 2020: March 11th, the WHO declares a global pandemic; March 13th, national emergency in the United States; March 19th, statewide shelter-in-place in the state of California. And so at the time, people were saying, "Do we as humanity need to pay a debt? And is that why it's happening now?" And the coincidence of it all. And so that's where the title of this first piece comes from. It's meant to be sort of devastating emotionally. It's the traumatic event that triggers the rest of the suite.

The second movement, Bonny of Morn, it was the first piece that I had ever composed that was truly in a major key. Everything else had been in minor or in some weird, funky mode. In this piece, I took some inspiration from, if you know the band composer, Viet Cuong, you'll hear some echoey woodwind things in here that are inspired by him. And funny enough, a symphonic metal band, Xanthochroid, "The Song Which Has no Name", but I took some inspiration from their harmony. And so in the middle section, you'll see it's very major at the beginning and at the end, but it's still kind of colored by that tragedy in the middle section. It's meant to represent the Bonny of Morn, finding the beauty in a terrible event. I think of like the musicians in concentration camps during the Holocaust; they were still making music, and they were still trying to find the beauty in this horrible event, and we are still performing their music today and studying it and celebrating it.

The third movement, titled Recompense, is meant to represent sadness and loss. Sometimes we just need to sit in our emotions and observe them and let them kind of happen and pass through us. I wrote it mostly in the basement of Faye Spanos Concert Hall at University of the Pacific, down there in the tuba studio. I was trying to find as many ways that I could harmonize around a single note, and so you'll hear throughout this piece one group of musicians, or sometimes just a single instrument, holding one pitch and then the entire band changing around them. And so that's us—that single note—and then all of our emotions kind of going around us and changing.

The fourth movement, A Savior in Ourselves, some of the parts were inspired by Antón Alcalde's Symphony No. 2. If you don't know Antón Alcalde, I highly recommend him, amazing, amazing composer. This was originally meant to represent the decision that we make when something bad happens to us to either crumble and fall apart or to choose to find meaning and overcome and move forward and make something of it. I kind of reject the idea that it has to be either/or now. I think that we can do one and then choose to do the other later. We don't need to be stuck in one, and I think that for me, that's been an evolution personally and for the meaning in this piece.

Yeah, 6 years past it now, I see that the idea of a last year—true last year of youth—is very flawed. There is no last year of youth. Our lives are very cyclical. Things happen, and we change, and we grow. We don't decide that it's the last year until we've decided that it is, right? The universe and the world will continue changing and growing around us, and it's up to us to decide if we're going to change and learn with it.

Green and the Golden was commissioned to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the City of Livermore. The title came to me while exploring rural Livermore in late April, during the short window when our hills are green on one side and golden on the other. “The Golden” honors all who came before us, and “Green” represents the continuing growth in our community.

Livermore is a fascinating place. It has deep agricultural roots and hosts the “World’s Fastest Rodeo,” yet it is also a scientific hub home to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. It sits between one of the largest agricultural regions in the world, the Central Valley; the cultural hub of San Francisco; and the tech giants of Silicon Valley. It hosts world-renowned wineries and even the world’s longest-burning lightbulb. This work attempts to capture the contrast of tradition and innovation that is ever-present in our City.

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I. The work opens with an air of mystery, evoking the feeling of cresting the rolling hills for the first time into the valley or making a profound new discovery. The harmony is influenced by sci-fi soundtracks I listened to growing up and each phrase is shaped in a way reaching higher and higher. The melody in this section is an augmentation of what is to come in the second section.

II. This fast-paced passage is meant to pay homage to Livermore’s famous “World’s Fastest Rodeo.” It depicts the growth of culture in the valley by taking the first section’s melody and turning it into something new. (Although it was composed first!) I wrote this section with my music students in mind and it is inspired by the music they most enjoy.

III. The lyrical middle section celebrates the natural beauty of the landscape and the warmth of the people living there. This central section is inspired by the shimmering golden hills of Livermore being blown about by the wind. Most importantly, it honors the love and kindness shared among the people of Livermore. A place is made by the people inhabiting it and the people of Livermore are a special bunch.

IV. The fourth section returns to the fast-paced energy of the second with excitement and draws influence from the American composer Aaron Copland. This year happens to also coincide with America’s 250th Anniversary!

V. This work concludes by taking the very first material and turning it into something that marches forward. It is inspired by military marches I played while attending Livermore High School and references LLNL’s history as a naval air station during WWII.