EMERGENT for orchestra

Duration: 10 minutes

Instrumentation: 3 (3rd dbl picc.)3 (3rd dbl EH) 3 (3rd dbl Bcl) 3 (3rd dbl cbsn)/4331/timp.3perc.harp/cel./strings

Program note:

Premiered by the San Antonio Philharmonic on its inaugural concert on September 16th, 2022, with Maestro Ken-David Masur conducting.

Commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.

The word “emergent” permeates conversation in our post-modern culture: technologies emerge, viruses emerge, organisms, economies, and trends likewise emerge. To me, the notion of emergence connotes an ascent in spite of resistance, a rising up where it is not expected, a calculus that multiplies predictability by the element of surprise. In a poetic sense, emergence describes the propensity of individual and collective human will toward transcendence despite all resistance. These have been years of fierce resistance. It’s hard to mark humanity’s gains amidst so much loss, and so much tearing of the social fabric in our own communities and around the world. And yet (and yet!), we still gather to tell stories, to sing, to dance, to witness our losses together that we might find joy in our communion. Emergence is a love song without words to our courage to continue gathering, to our primordial longing for meaning and beauty.

Beginning with a hazy growl in the contrabasses, beneath a misty cloud of ambient percussion, a lone bass trombone intones a chromatic melody out of the depths. Joined now by tuba, then with horns, the imitative melody ascends slowly upward before a background of shimmering strings. Thus embarks the sonic journey, emerging from a haze ever yearning toward a destination of exquisite resplendence. Emergent is not without its distractions and its detours—a stroke of art imitating life—yet its propensity to rise in spite of resistance, despite gravity, remains undeterred.