where we were (2023)

for saxophone quartet

Program Note:

“where we were” is a miniature about attending church as a young person riddled with anxieties and distractions. My relationship with any sort of organized religion now feels incredibly distant at best, and yet some of my first concrete musical memories were formed as a churchgoer. While much of the “religious music” I’ve written is an attempt to contort and sharpen liturgical memory into a kind of weapon of personal reclamation, this particular piece was an anomalous exercise in reflecting on moments of stillness, repose, and beauty from these experiences—a lovely chant tune, a beam of light refracting through stained glass, the faint scent of incense in the seemingly infinite darkness of a vigil…

The piece is structured upon a chorale—a wordless “hymn” that spins off into a distant, meandering melodic line, before reiterating itself as a distrait set of flurries and echoes that fades into nothing.