From Detroit to LA
for Wind Band (Grade 4)

live performance by the University of Texas Symphony Band


"From Detroit to LA” is based on a flight that I took in November 2009. This was the first time I had flown on a clear day at a low altitude, and I was struck by the patterns that emerged from the air: not only the man-made patterns of towns and plowed farmland, but also the natural patterns from mountains, rivers, and canyons. Though we were moving at several hundred miles per hour, everything below seemed expansive, and shifted from view at a slow and gradual pace, which led me to compose this piece in a quasi-minimalist style.

All of the melodies for the piece were composed on the actual flight, and the order in which they appear in the composition is the order in which they appeared during the flight. The purpose of the trip was to take a composition lesson with Frank Ticheli, so a few of the motifs and melodic fragments (as well as other aspects of the composition) are imitative of and/or inspired by his music.






Download PDF of C score     Download PDF of transposed score

Scores
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