Sketches I (2024)

Sketches I - Reference Recording (No Contrabassoon) - Brandon Bayer, Marissa Kopf, Kenedy Lerma, Logan Odom, Jared Worman - UT San Antonio School of Music - Nov. 8, 2025

During the writing this work, I noticed my growing interest in writing absolute music. There’s just something fascinating about music’s ability to tell it's own story and show it's own colors; a work that audiences can interpret on their own and form their own stories and imagery. It's quite a beautiful revelation that I've now embraced as a composer in my writings. I've already achieved this approach to creating in my previous work 5 Short Pieces for Piano, so I thought why not try it again!?

Thus came Sketches I : originally a set of 7 piano sketches, I decided to turn this into a work for woodwind quintet given the amount of color the ensemble provides, bringing each of these moments to life! Like a collection of portraits :

I. is a melancholy that becomes more passionate, then dissipates;

II. is a hurried frenzy that suddenly slows, taking a quiet end;

III. is a playful dance that gives quite the joyous jump at the end!;

IV. is a vast and lonely void where ideas seem to float around;

V. is a lively, but slightly clumsy get-down that becomes mysterious and returns to its clumsy ways;

VI. is a dream which introspects over the gentleness and sorrow of the world;

and VII. is an aggressive and heavy trudge which dazes and culminates in a fantastic ending!

Each movement offers it's own story, and I invite all the audience to immerse themselves into each of the worlds within.