For Angels, Slow Ascending
Wind Ensemble
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In December of 2013, a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT claimed the lives of 27 people, including twenty young children. I was living in Ann Arbor alone. Nearly a year later, Gio Santos asked me for a piece for his band at Loma Linda Academy, a Seventh-Day Adventist school in California. I had wanted to write a tribute to the victims of this tragedy for a while; when Gio offered me the chance to write for his band, full of talented young people who remember being the age of the children at Newtown, I knew immediately that this was the moment.
The title For Angels, Slow Ascending isn’t strictly Christian imagery. Rather, it refers to our collective understanding of angels as otherworldly, beautiful messengers who might bridge the gap between this world and whatever lays beyond. With the title (as with the music), I hoped to convey a reflective mourning that ultimately gives way to a prayer for peace.
For Angels, Slow Ascending is dedicated to Gio Santos.