Product Overview
As an arranger and transcriber of choral works for the wind orchestra, the most important responsibility I find is setting a storyline through instrumental textures. Several times I tried to embrace the depth of this work through its text. And though I thoroughly enjoyed its choral setting, I could not find the musical language that invited its instrumental conveyance. Then, on December 14th of 2012, while playing with my 8-year old daughter, I learned of the details surrounding Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT. There I sat, listening as a commentator told of the some 600 children at the school and their parents, who waited outside in a despair I cannot begin to imagine, hoping that their child was not one of the victims. Little by little, the children were released into the arms of their waiting loved ones. But nothing could have prepared me for the emotions that arose when I learned that the parents and grandparents of 20 children learned of their loss when they did not return to them. There are no
words to describe what this picture conveyed in my mind in that moment. But musically, what you are about to perform is the result. I deeply thank Blake R. Henson and GIA Publications for the right to transcribe this work on their behalf.
