Instrumentation: Chamber Orchestra

Year: 2013

Duration: 7.5 minutes

Program Note:
Writing The Deep End was an intense and difficult process. I had recently finished my masters in composition in December 2012 and had roughly eight months until I started my doctorate. This was the first period in my life where I had to write music without the help of weekly composition lessons, and I felt quite unmoored. The Deep End was to be written for Alarm Will Sound for the 2013 International Composers Festival. The piece was due in early summer of 2013, and I completely mismanaged my time by spending too long on a solo piano piece that spring. By early April, I realized I had left myself a little under two months to finish the piece before the deadline. A combination of panic, long hours, and writer’s block made for several grueling weeks. Painful life lessons were learned, and since then, I have never put myself in that scenario again. And yet, this piece is special to me because I felt thrown into the compositional deep end and came out with my head above water.