Soliloquy

Violin

Written for my friend and colleague, Lauren Anderson, a fellow BYU graduate student. The inspiration for this piece came from a few different sources. I recently moved to Houston with my wife and 1-year-old son to begin my doctoral studies in composition at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. My wife and I are both from the Northwest, and so the local climate and wildlife are some things we're not as familiar with, cicadas being one of them. I was intrigued particularly with the fact that cicadas, upon reaching adult form, shed their skin, leaving behind a ghost-like shell stuck to the bark of trees or on the surfaces of fences. Then, only about a month after we moved to Houston, Hurricane Harvey struck the area, and our first-floor apartment was flooded, destroying many of our belongings, including most of our furniture and appliances. My family was safe in Dallas when the storm hit, but coming back to Houston to find our home and belongings destroyed by floodwaters was devastating. In the time that followed, many hands reached out to help us as we salvaged what we could from our old place, found a new apartment, and began rebuilding our lives. We couldn't be more grateful. During this difficult time for my family, this piece became more deeply personal. It became an opportunity for me to express some of the frustration and pain I felt during the ordeal of the flood and the process of rebuilding. What began as a simple exploration of cicada shells transformed into a journey of loss, grief, recovery, and new beginnings.