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Shadow Symmetries was written for and is dedicated to my friend Tyler Austin and the NewFound Chamber Winds. The first three movements are lifted from my brass quintet, Sacred Geometry, which was inspired by the incredible art of Catalán architect Antoni Gaudí, and the fourth movement fuses music from the final movement of Sacred Geometry with material from my marimba concerto Bent Space. I felt like I had more to say with this music, so while some of it is a simple translation into a new medium, there are revisions and even reimaginings of the material throughout, enough to warrant a new title. The music moves through a series of mirrored spaces, each reflecting on something deeper, something hidden—sometimes exact, sometimes distorted. Overall, the movements are contrasting, though the first and third are connected in sound and spirit—like strange mirrors of each other—as are the second and fourth.

The first movement, Ripples, is dedicated to my friend Rob Carnochan, who passed away unexpectedly in the fall of 2024. I vividly remember hearing about Rob’s passing—it took my breath away. It just didn’t seem possible. Rob was one of the brightest lights along my path in music—a conductor that believed in me at the beginning of my career and supported me and my music in meaningful and truly formative ways. I miss him, and I will forever be grateful for his artistry and his friendship. In this music, I imagine ripples gently emanating from a stone dropped in glassy water—an invocation to meditate on the relationship and impact we have with time and with each other.

The second movement, Ouroboros, is an ancient symbol for a snake eating its own tail. This music is whimsical and absurd. It is political satire.

My earliest musical memories are of singing hymns in church. I have a lasting affection for this seemingly simple form, where four voices move together, while also spinning threads of elegant counterpoint. The third movement, Hymn, is a fantasy on the idea of a hymn, an exploration of various colors and combinations that move between clear, hymn-like simplicity and rhapsody.

The title for the final movement, Strange Loops, comes from an idea first explored in Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter’s concept of strange loops—self-referential systems—get at the heart of the mind and consciousness itself, and in that spirit, this movement is somewhat autobiographical, bringing together ideas spanning decades of my creative life into one continuous thread. To me, this movement feels like a rondo—an alternation of contrasting themes—although not a strict one. I imagine these various threads woven together into a larger cord. The strands are made of musical objects that I love, including a rising, “spectral” cloud of sound, built on the harmonic series—the foundation of sound itself, a fugue-like section that references the theme from J.S. Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue,” and a heavy metal inflected section that sonically emulates the mind-bending tessellations of M.C. Escher.