2020 was premiered on April 30, 2021 by the Fillmore Central High School Marching Band. Each year when I start our Symphonic Composition Project the piece is just named whatever year it happens to be. You may have noticed that “2020” did not premiere in 2020 – like everything else […]
Haboob was premiered on May 6, 2019 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. From start to finish it gains momentum and sweeps the audience and performers off their feet! “A haboob is a type of intense dust storm carried on an atmospheric gravity current, also known as a weather front. Haboobs occur regularly […]
The Inventor And His Foley was premiered on May 7, 2018 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. The Inventor And His Foley took a while to materialize. There are several students’ Symphonic Composition Project submission note-for-note in the final work, but I had a hard time figuring out […]
Choking Hazard was premiered on May 9, 2017 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. My inspiration for the main idea of this song came about a month before I actually sat down to write. I took a student to the UNK honor choir, which provided me the excellent […]
The Walking Wind was premiered on May 3, 2016 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. The Walking Wind started as an experiment – the title came to me before the piece ever did, so I dug through Symphonic Composition Project submissions looking for ideas that could fit that […]
The Rock was premiered on May 5, 2015 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. No piece of visual art has ever captivated me like Peter Blume’s The Rock. I first saw it as a freshman in college while on band tour to Chicago. We had a free day […]
Red Tide was premiered on May 6, 2014 by the Fillmore Central High School Marching Band. It honored the 70th anniversary of the landing at Normandy Beach, most commonly known as “D-Day,” in which thousands of Allied soldiers landed in northern France to fight the Axis forces that had taken […]
Dance of Lucifer was premiered on May 7, 2013 by the Fillmore Central High School Marching Band. On my fifth edition of the Symphonic Composition Project I had to make use of my percussion section. Some of the other pieces we had programmed were pretty light on the percussion parts, […]
Originally titled “It’s 7/8 Somewhere,” Septo was premiered on May 8, 2012 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. Heptaphobes should consult their psychiatrists before performing this piece. The idea for Septo came long before a note ever hit the page. After I wrote Tuo Edisni (The Caktak March) […]
The Bacon March (Yankee Doodle Delicious) was premiered on May 11, 2011 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. Make sure your bacon is cooked to your liking when you perform, lest you be stuck with raw food… This is what happens when you let high schoolers name your […]
Balli, Balli, Balli! was premiered on May 11, 2010 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. With the second installment in the Symphonic composition project, I had a better feel for looking for melodic and complimentary ideas in the students’ writings. The result was Balli, Balli, Balli!, and even […]
The House on the Hill was premiered on May 12, 2009 by the Fillmore Central High School Concert Band. It was rewritten in 2018 for marching band. Meizhou Bao was the first product of the Symphonic Composition Project. As I was looking over the students’ work, I found one that had […]