The Last Four Years - Why I'm Doing This

A couple months ago, I graduated (woohoo!) from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in Music Composition. I was very fortunate to spend four years studying under and building friendships with incredible music faculty such as Mark Lackey, Joel Davis, Kathryn Fouse, Donald Sanders, Beth McGinnis, Brian Walden, and many others — and as if that wasn’t good enough, I got a degree out of it all, too. One month prior to graduation, I held my Senior Composition recital, which consisted of an hour of music (and about half an hour of moving instruments around — sorry again, attendees) that I had spent the last four years creating.

As I sat with the rest of the audience and heard the fruits of four years of labor being performed on stage, many, many things raced through my mind. But one thought that kept coming back to me was this:

This needs more explanation.

I had written program notes, sure, but there’s only so much you can get by Ms. Rene’…. And besides, a student recital isn’t supposed to have any depth, right? This guy’s still a kid! He’s got his whole life in front of him! What could he possibly have to say that should mean anything to me?

Logo designed by Brooke English

Well, that’s why I’m doing this: because I believe I have something to say. Not because I’m all that important in the grand scheme of things, but because I think everyone has something to say, and everyone has something to learn from everyone else. I spent four years of my life writing a great deal of music, and out of all of it I chose these nine pieces because I believed they were the ones that best expressed everything that I wanted to say.

Listening to the music that I poured my soul into for the last four years, I knew there were such depths to be reached with it that could not possibly be reached in the setting of a student recital: depths of love, heartbreak, elation, depression, confidence, doubt, integrity, mistakes, and so much more. And as powerful and beautiful as music is, I believe it only gains more power and beauty when the right words are attached to it, whether that be in the form of lyrics, program notes, a conversation, whatever. Words — just like music — are art, and you can almost always make art more meaningful (and often more beautiful) by adding other art to it (don’t take that and run with it; it gets scary fast).

So, I will write. Every week for the next two months, I will be posting the audio, the score, and detailed background of one piece from my senior recital. I hope that through this process, you will hear and understand what I have to say and will learn something from it. I hope that I succeed in taking you deep into the journey that gave birth to all of this music, so that through my genius and idiocy, my triumph and defeat, my life and death, you will learn something valuable and beautiful.

I don’t know what I’m going to write for the next several weeks. I know all of the music, of course, and I know some of the things I want to say about it all, but this is just as much a journey for me as it is for you — perhaps even more so. I hope you will dive into this with me, and I hope it will inspire you to share some of the depths that you have within yourself.

I will be making the audio and scores available for purchase when possible (because capitalism), but what matters to me much more than selling this music is that my art is received and understood by as many people as possible, and that all of those people are better for it.