Composer
Conductor Kevin L. Sedatole and the Michigan State University Wind Symphony’s new digital release features David’s Enigma and River of Time (trumpet concerto) with soloist Justin Emerich.
River of Time was commissioned by and written for trumpeter Neil Mueller, conductor Timothy Muffitt, and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. This version for wind ensemble was premiered by Caleb Hudson and the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, Jerry Junkin, conductor, in Carnegie Hall.
In the spring of 2023, I was studying conducting with my friend Kevin Noe when he used the phrase “river of time” to describe the flow of music through time. I also happened to be reading two books that examined time from different perspectives: Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. Rovelli’s book explores the mysteries of time through the lens of physics, woven together with poetry, philosophy, art, and history, while Meditations, although not directly about time per se, certainly grapples with life’s ephemerality. I remember this passage from Meditations Book Five jumping right off the page:
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see…
(translation by Gregory Hays)
The “river of time” became the conceptual thread that pulled together the musical and philosophical ideas that I had not yet been able to pull together into a coherent whole—it’s as if this piece became my own personal way of exploring, knowing, and communicating these ideas.
The first movement is called Becoming. I imagine a kind of primordial clock from which time flows—swirling—becoming an infinity of matter and moments. The second movement, Flowing, is a meditation on being part of the river of time—being present. Imagine a beautiful moment that you simply don’t want to end. For me, I remember holding my infant son, listening to his slow, relaxed breathing as he slept peacefully on my chest. I’m reminded of a poignant passage from Matthew Zapruder’s Story of a Poem: “That night the boy slept all night on his father’s chest. It was the only time in his life the father had felt his body was perfect, and not one time did he wish anything were different, or that he were elsewhere.” Of course, moments like this are often also shaded with a tinge of melancholy, as thoughts slip toward the past or the future, wondering whether a moment just like this might ever occur again. The third movement is called Crossing. Our perception of time is often linear, but what if it was circular or it could be bent? What if we could exist outside of it? What if we could traverse the river of time?
River of Time was commissioned by and written for trumpeter Neil Mueller, conductor Timothy Muffitt, and the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. The version for wind ensemble was premiered on June 2, 2024 by Caleb Hudson and the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, Jerry Junkin, conductor, in Carnegie Hall. The wind ensemble version was awarded the 2024 American Bandmasters Association Sousa/Ostwald Award. For those interested in an archival recording of the wind version, please contact David.
In the spring of 2023, I was studying conducting with my friend Kevin Noe when he used the phrase “river of time” to describe the flow of music through time. I also happened to be reading two books that examined time from different perspectives: Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. Rovelli’s book explores the mysteries of time through the lens of physics, woven together with poetry, philosophy, art, and history, while Meditations, although not directly about time per se, certainly grapples with life’s ephemerality. I remember this passage from Meditations Book Five jumping right off the page:
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see…
(translation by Gregory Hays)
The “river of time” became the conceptual thread that pulled together the musical and philosophical ideas that I had not yet been able to pull together into a coherent whole—it’s as if this piece became my own personal way of exploring, knowing, and communicating these ideas.
The first movement is called Becoming. I imagine a kind of primordial clock from which time flows—swirling—becoming an infinity of matter and moments. The second movement, Flowing, is a meditation on being part of the river of time—being present. Imagine a beautiful moment that you simply don’t want to end. For me, I remember holding my infant son, listening to his slow, relaxed breathing as he slept peacefully on my chest. I’m reminded of a poignant passage from Matthew Zapruder’s Story of a Poem: “That night the boy slept all night on his father’s chest. It was the only time in his life the father had felt his body was perfect, and not one time did he wish anything were different, or that he were elsewhere.” Of course, moments like this are often also shaded with a tinge of melancholy, as thoughts slip toward the past or the future, wondering whether a moment just like this might ever occur again. The third movement is called Crossing. Our perception of time is often linear, but what if it was circular or it could be bent? What if we could exist outside of it? What if we could traverse the river of time?
Sacred Geometry is inspired by the work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). Gaudí is best known for creating la Basílica de la Sagrada Família, a cathedral in Barcelona, Spain, which has been under construction since 1882. Gaudí integrated symbols of his faith into every detail of the Basílica, weaving them into complex geometric forms he studied in the natural world, like hyperbolic paraboloids, hyperboloids, helicoids, and cones. He also utilized Trencadís, a form of mosaic art made by cementing together recycled shards of tile and chinaware, fashioning beautiful new things out of the broken and discarded. The inside of the cathedral mimics a forest, with tree-like columns and branches supporting hyperboloid vaults in spectacular fractals, evoking the infinite—connecting God and Creation. I think of this piece like a strange liturgy—or ritual—to meditate on this striking space, to contemplate Gaudí’s way of seeing the world, and, hopefully, to discover a similar sense of awe and wonder.
The first movement, Ripples, is quite simple––a chanted invocation in the trumpets with orchestrated reverberations evoking the large spaces inside the cathedral. There are also distant echoes of William Byrd’s setting of Ave Verum Corpus (1605) in this movement. My favorite moment of Byrd’s work is this surprising, fleeting dissonance, the result of a major chord in the upper voices against a weeping, descending minor melody in the bass, coinciding with the text Miserere––have mercy. It is bittersweet and broken.
The second movement, Gaudí, is playful and whimsical, even irreverent. The Latin root of Gaudí is gaudere, which means “to rejoice” or “to take pleasure in.” Gaudí threaded the seemingly fantastical aspects of our world into dream-like designs and surreal structures that seem unnaturally natural, or naturally unnatural. Imagine stopping to marvel at some small, unusual flower like Orchis italica or hearing the peculiar call of a Brown Sicklebill or a Black-throated Loon. I think of this movement as a walk through a garden of strange delights.
A nautilus is a marine mollusk with a shell in the shape of a logarithmic spiral. As the nautilus grows, it lives in the outermost chamber of the shell, sealing off the previous chamber with a wall that prevents it from returning to its old home. As a symbol, it has many meanings and connections, but, for me, I find it to be a powerful metaphor: building anew while always leaving behind an artifact of the past—a stunningly beautiful one, in fact. The third movement, Nautilus, is built on a small, simple phrase that spins and rotates into longer and longer threads and swirling, circular harmonic progressions.
The final movement is called Helix. The helix also has many connections and connotations, appearing in everything from spiral staircases to seashells, forming the structure for the molecules from which life is built, and lying at the center of mathematical formulas that describe both infinitesimally small subatomic particles as well as the mechanics of the entire universe.
Spiral is a short fanfare for eight trumpets written for Alex Noppe and the Boise State University Trumpet Ensemble.
Recording by:
Michael Sachs – Principal Trumpet, Cleveland Orchestra
Adam Luftman – Principal Trumpet, San Francisco Opera & Ballet
Michael Tiscione – Associate Principal Trumpet, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
David Gordon – Principal Trumpet, Seattle Symphony
Billy Hunter – Principal Trumpet, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Justin Emerich – Associate Professor of Trumpet, Michigan State University
Mark Maliniak – 4th/Utility Trumpet, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Jack Sutte – 2nd Trumpet, Cleveland Orchestra
Program Note:
This piece is my attempt to find the places of stillness and quiet inside myself at times when I am feeling anything but still and quiet.
Version for alto saxophone and piano (created for Keaton Garrett).