Surrounding Flames
© 2012, MaLoMaLo Press
for Orchestra
Duration: 6:45 min.
Program Notes:
The initial thematic material for this piece came to me while I was a senior in high school. I had been writing music for sevearal years without a composition teacher, and was well-aware of my inability to write music at the level I wanted for this theme. So I decided to wait - wait until my education would give me the tools to write at a higher level, wait until I knew this piece would have a chance of evading the bin. The time came, the music underwent a pretty serious downscaling from my initial grandiose scheme of four movements to one, and even my initial musical idea "exoticised" from its initial conception. But that seed of an idea still runs throughout the piece, representing many different kinds of fire, from the candles in a monastery to tea lights floating in water, to a raging forest fire, to lighthouse signals.