Hope Rising

Instrumentation: solo flute

Duration: 7′

Hope Rising was commissioned by the 2022 Impulse New Music Festival and premiered online in September 2022 by Erin McKibben.

Program notes: There is so much pain and heartbreak in the world, both on a personal and public, even worldwide, level. So often it seems I can only stand back and helplessly watch the news or occasionally donate an insignificant sum towards an enormous problem. I wanted to express my empathy for those who are suffering the way I would if I could sit with them. I wanted to write something like an elegy, but not an elegy. A piece that would give space for people to process their grief, but not package it neatly with a sad melody and a little bow. The piece starts in the darkest mode, Locrian, but little by little lightens to Dorian. Hope Rises as we make our way through grief, yet is still punctuated with sighs, sobs, and flurries of memory and emotion.