Rise

Rise is a brief orchestral essay on moving upward. The music is one extended ramp, an awakening followed by a brief fall, landing somewhere different then where it began. It is also a meditation on the idea of the pastoral. From Vivaldi to Strauss, there is a long tradition of evoking the pastoral landscape in symphonic music. What does it mean to romanticize nature in the post-industrial, climate-changing 21st century? Perhaps this explains the somewhat haunting mood of the piece. There is a celebration of the natural world, but also an unsettled feeling that never resolves.