Blue-Sky Fanfare (Brass Ensemble)

Blue-Sky Fanfare, winner of the 2025–2026 Dallas Winds Fanfare Competition, works on two levels. First, I wanted the melody, harmony, and orchestration to create the feeling of a vast, sunlit sky. Second is a nod to "blue-sky" thinking—a term for creative exploration unconstrained by practical limits—and the way that spirit shapes the early stages of composition.

On the first level, the music creates the feeling of standing under a bright, open sky. To get there, I drew on familiar fanfare tropes and put my own spin on them. Consonant harmonies, articulative arpeggios, and a recurring ascending melodic motif work together to suggest motion across an ever-changing sky. I also tried to capture more specific imagery: melodic figures that start small and quiet and quickly grow in dynamics and complexity replicate the feeling of a fast-moving plane passing overhead. To create the contrast in motion often seen between things like slow-moving clouds and birds flying across the sky, I incorporated moments of slow harmonic rhythm alongside fast articulative passages. While no one trope represents a singular idea, the combinations and alteration of their specific elements help tie them all together to create this imagery. 

On the second level, the piece celebrates the early phase of composing—when ideas are still allowed to flow freely, before being shaped into something cohesive. When I started this piece, I immersed myself in fanfares from across the wind band repertoire. This is always my favorite part of the compositional process, so you will hear traces of some of those works throughout: trombone glissandi and brass mutes that nod to John Mackey's Fanfare for Full Fathom Five, harmonic progressions and fanfare figures that pay homage to John Williams, and a brief moment of aleatoricism inspired by the fanfare-like motifs in John Corigliano's Circus Maximus. These references are a record of the blue-sky journey I went on while finding my way into this piece.