ORCHESTRA

NOTE FROM COMPOSER

Majestic Fields (Rhapsody for Orchestra) was commissioned and composed for the students and directors of the 2022 Big 9 Festival with the first performance held on Friday, April 29th 2022 in Austin, Minnesota.  Coming off the 2020 pandemic where schools, ensembles, and music classes either rehearsed sporadically or not at all, the organizers of the Big 9 Festival wanted to commission a piece that would help celebrate the return to in-person learning and music making.

Majestic Fields, written using a rhapsodic form, aims to lift the spirits of its listeners as well as the performers.  The goal was to compose a piece that would use themes and melodies that would be palatable to any audience member as well as enjoyable for the performer.  I looked to write material that would be fun to play, fun to listen to, and hopefully, inspiring enough to lift our spirits out of the emotional rollercoaster that many musicians and concert goers experienced during the pandemic.  The melodies written within this score offer the listener different moods or characters throughout. These characters include nuances of patriotic and western themes that culminate within the middle of the piece where the listener is treated to an energetic and at times scherzo-like hoe-down.  This hoe-down section was inspired by the great scores from Copland’s Hoe Down and John Williams’s Cowboys and aims to unapologetically capture the wonderful energy those scores presented, but in a way that is not as technically demanding for both performer and director.  The rhythmic patterns, technical demands, and melodic material are all very playable by a wide range of performers while treating the audience to a fun and energetic moment within the piece. 

All sections within the orchestra are at times heavily depended upon to carry the score.  Each instrument family is utilized throughout to create a tour-de-force of energy and spirited themes.  It’s my hope as the composer that anyone listening or performing this piece would find this a fun and genuine composition that could be performed within any portion of a program or time of year.