Program Note:
Burst of Flight was composed in Spring 2011 for members of the Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble. I wanted to provide students with chamber music experiences, and so we featured subsets of the ensemble during the first half of the ensemble’s season finale in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on May 15, 2011.
The title of the work refers to the feeling of exhilaration one experiences while traveling in a fast vehicle through an open expanse. Though the word “flight” implies an aeronautical image, I am actually referring to the feeling of “flying forward” in a car through the desert of the American Southwest. Thanks to the support and generosity of my father during my final year in high school, he and I made bi-weekly road trips from Phoenix to Los Angeles so that I could take trumpet lessons in California. The ostinato in the allegro of this section was composed during one of our early morning Westward drives. When I wrote down the hemiola rhythm, I was enjoying the vastness of the arid mountains and valleys that surround the I-10 while moving at nearly eighty miles per hour.
The slow introduction was composed to achieve three goals. First, the opening wedge gesture is designed to make use of the natural homogenous timbre of instruments in the brass ensemble. Because this was conceived as a pedagogical piece, the wedge that starts on a unison F encourages players to learn how to blend sound and then build intervallic integrity through the descending notes of a B-flat Lydian scale. Finally, the harmonic tension of the opening builds an energy that is later released in the allegro section.
Performances
05|15|2011
Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall – Costa Mesa, CA
Members of Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble