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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?