There is much music about environmental features like earth, sea, and sky, but I find it increasingly important to write music evoking the perspective of environmental features. These environmental features, as non-living entities, are not something we may think of as having a perspective, but their presence is inextricably woven into our lives. Much more than a static backdrop, earth, sea, and sky move and change alongside living things and their actions. My hope is that this music encourages us to see the form of life our broader environment has, even if this form of life is one that is very different from our own.

Dancing Earth, through touches of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon and William Walton’s Viola Concerto, II. Vivo con molto preciso, explores the rooting relationship between earth and other life forms. It is through a grounding connection to the earth that life is able to explode outwards in abundance in all directions.

From earth, we move to sea, asking the question, “How does the sea feel about rising tides?”. Mourning Sea suggests an answer to that question, taking musical influence from Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Igor Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola: how high the water level might be is beyond the control of the waters, but the waters must go in and out.

The suite ends with Swirling Sky, an invocation of air currents: sometimes propulsive, sometimes crystalline, sometimes jagged, but always changing. Taking inspiration from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata No. 1, IV. Presto, Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Filter, and Daft Punk’s Derezzed, this final movement completes the suite’s stylistic journey from jazz fusion and neo-romanticism through baroque and EDM influences, the 4 major stylistic reference points in my current compositional work.

Signs of Life was written for my friend Elijah Lisboa. A heartfelt thanks to Elijah for your commitment to, enthusiasm for, and joy in the process of bringing new music to life.