TOTALITY (2024)

Commissioned by the Shelby Community Band (Shelbyville, Indiana)

Premiered April 7, 2024 | Columbus, Indiana

Totality was commissioned by the Shelby Community Band to celebrate Central Indiana’s first total solar eclipse in over a millennium. Premiered the day before this rare event, the work reflects upon the collective human and emotional experience of an eclipse across four distinct movements, taking imaginative liberties to explore the world’s reaction to a breathtaking celestial wonder.

I. Dawn’s Awakening

The work opens slowly, painting the quiet morning before the event with rich atmospheric textures. A semi-atonal melody emerges in the French horn and is gradually embellished by the ensemble, capturing the faint, eerie anticipation in the air. Suddenly, the music bursts into vibrant, energetic melodies and driving harmonies, evoking the familiar hustle and bustle of everyday life before the sky begins to change.

II. Interstellar Lament

As the moon approaches the sun, a calm stillness washes over the Earth. Humanity stands together in anxious, quiet awe. A noble chorale takes center stage—its unified, interdependent texture symbolizing the profound sense of togetherness felt when millions of people pause to gaze at the same sky. The music gently dissolves as the Earth is engulfed in temporary darkness, leaving only the beautiful, glowing ring of the solar corona suspended in the void.

III. Shadow Dance

A light, scherzo-like movement, Shadow Dance depicts the strange and whimsical disruptions that occur when daytime abruptly turns to night. Playful rhythms and sudden gestural shifts evoke the confused, erratic behaviors of wildlife—birds taking flight in panic, nocturnal creatures awakening prematurely, and the bizarre, dancing shadow bands that ripple across the ground in the moments surrounding totality.

IV. Radiant Rebirth

The final movement begins as the moon departs, releasing bold, brilliant blasts of light back onto the landscape. As the sun reclaims the sky, familiar routines resume, but not without transformation. Built on triumphant fanfares and surging harmonies, Radiant Rebirth captures a world returning to daily life with a renewed sense of wonder, vitality, and gratitude after bearing witness to a monumental cosmic miracle.