Tough Time, Joy Pending
Quarterly Composition Compilation
January 2026
Hello friends!
It’s been a hot minute since my last update, but boy is there some stuff to talk about!
Email List
I decided to set up an email list for those of you that want to get an email when I post an update. The idea is to limit how often I email to once per quarter (since this is a Quarterly Composition Compilation) but to provide some way for you to get notified if you don’t use social media much. I’m also hoping to set up some sort of “live event list” (i.e. if a piece I wrote is being performed near you), but that’s still a work in progress.
So, if that’s something that you’re interested in, head over to my website’s main page and sign up now!
Where is the Summer QCC?
About that…I didn’t get around to writing one unfortunately. My defense? Not much happened.
This was (mostly) intentional – I was feeling pretty burned-out from the school year, and wanted a bit of a break to mull over some ideas and recharge my creativity – but the unintentional side effect was that I experienced some nasty writer’s block for the first part of this semester (more on that later). But I did have some enriching experiences that I’m hoping will inform and inspire some future projects, so it wasn’t a total waste.
If you’re curious, here are a couple of notable things that happened over the summer:
Visited Yellowstone for the first time!
Performed in a couple concerts with AF Symphony
Did some Lego designing
Saw Pirates of Penzance for the first time
Went to Brickslopes (the annual Utah Lego convention)
OK, now that we’ve gotten those out of the way let’s talk about the stuff I wrote!
Yours truly, trying to smile despite the foul-smelling water.
Sorcery Slam!
The game finally released on Steam, and is available for purchase now!
It feels like this has been in the works for ages now, but it is immensely rewarding to finally have it past the finish line. So far, feedback has been positive and people seem to be enjoying the game (and I do a happy dance anytime someone mentions the music 😊).
We also had the world premiere of the orchestral suite by the AF Symphony in October, and it was an absolute joy to hear that come together. I only got to hear them rehearse the arrangement once before I flew back to Boston, but the video they posted on YouTube sounded great and seems to have been well-received. If you’d like to hear that, check it out here:
American Fork Symphony, Sorcery Slam!
I’ve gotten a lot of questions around what the future is looking like for this game, but I unfortunately don’t have much information. The developer has batted around some ideas for different bosses, story modes, alternate game modes and the like, but nothing has actually been started or decided. So in the meantime I’m just continuing to level up my composition process and hope for the opportunity to write more music for the game in the future!
Summary: Game published, orchestral suite premiered, finished for the time being.
Terra Branta Canadensis (Version 2)
Had some major updates on this one! When we last left this piece, it had been read/recorded by BUSO (Boston University Symphony Orchestra) players, and I had some ideas on how to revise and fix up the piece. Fast forward to this semester, and I finally sat down to implement a lot of these changes. The biggest change is that (at the suggestion of my teacher) I tried to think about the piece from a musical perspective: what is the main musical point of the piece? How does that develop over time? What can I do with this that will make it musically memorable? The first version consisted of a series of acoustic episodes that (vaguely) told a story about a day in the life of a goose; in the updated version, I retained this order/story but added in a melody that serves as the throughline while going through various permutations.
I also made a bunch of other fun changes that I want to share, so here they are in no particular order:
The “main melody” is based on a recording of a bunch of goslings chirping.
My favorite variation is the one where I “jazzed up” the melody – threw in a lot of 7th chords, increased the tempo, and swung the 8th notes – which then gets interrupted by a bunch of car horns in the final section. And features a jazz clarinet solo!
I totally overhauled the “goose crossing” section by improvising a pseudo-atonal pizzicato sequence, but imagining what it would sound like if a goose was playing a piano with its feet. And I finally got the squirrel added in!
I decided late in the process that adding in “fixed media” (i.e. recordings) would be a fun way to spice up the piece.
I submitted the updated version to a composition competition at Boston University, and surprisingly it won! This means that it will be programmed for a BUSO concert this upcoming semester, which means the conductors and musicians will be spending some time rehearsing the piece prior to performing it (more than the 15 minutes I got for the reading session 😊). I’m so excited to hear how this comes together and can’t wait to share the performance with y’all!
Summary: Version 2 finished (besides fixed media elements), programmed for performance sometime this semester.
Creation Symphony (working title)
Got a lot of major updates here!
As a part of my master’s degree at Boston University I am required to write a piece for large ensemble that is “significant.” What does that mean exactly? Nobody knows exactly, but after a lot of back-and-forth I finally settled on pursuing Creation Symphony as my final “Thesis Project.”
The “elevator pitch” for this piece is that I am doing a musical setting of the Creation story as told in Genesis 1-2 that will incorporate Hebrew cantillation*, SATB choir, and instrumental musicians (how many exactly is still TBD).
So far, I’ve sketched out a lot of “big picture” organizational ideas and started drilling down on the content in each one (I have so many loose papers with random ideas). One of the big challenges has been incorporating the previous material that I wrote a few years ago without boxing myself in creatively, but so far I’m feeling optimistic about things coming together.
The next step is actually writing the music now, and will likely be what I spend most of this semester working on. Over the years I’ve found that the pieces that come together best are the ones that I’ve conceptually planned out in advance, so I’m hoping that all this pre-planning will yield the results I’m hoping for.
Summary: Pre-planning complete (mostly), time to actually compose!
*One of these days I’ll actually get around to writing a post about cantillation, but in short imagine that instead of just reading the scriptures that you have to sing them. I learned that there are several different traditions for how to do this (called “tropes”), but they’re all based on the same cantillation marks. At the suggestion of my composition teacher I was able to get in contact with a Jewish cantor who will be cantillating through those verses, which will then inform how I musically approach the piece.
Tannanim
This semester I took an electronic music course where the final project was to compose a 5-6 minute piece that was then “performed” for the class on our last day (i.e. press play on the audio file). Leading up to this we had several assignments where we composed 1-2 minute “miniatures” demonstrating particular concepts we had gone over in class. These ended up being a lifesaver for me – like I mentioned earlier, I had some severe writer’s block this semester, but in writing these miniatures I was able to get back some confidence in my ability to write music.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on the final project, although I ended up running out of time to do everything that I wanted to. This piece focused on whale sounds, but was really an exploration of color and texture with a bunch of sounds that I got from various sources. My hope is that I can use some of this material in The Creation Symphony and bring in some of those ideas that I didn’t have time for.
Summary: Sort-of finished, but hopefully being incorporated into Creation Symphony
Listening List
I thought it might be fun to share some of what I’ve been listening to lately, so here are my jams for the last few months:
-Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Lorien Testard
This is an Indy game that came out earlier this year that has (deservedly) won tons of awards. The story is incredibly well-done, and intensely explores deep themes like suffering and loss while also including fun and delightful elements. I admit that part of the reason I have enjoyed this soundtrack so much is due to my connection with the game’s story, but from a musical perspective there are actually a lot of interesting elements to dissect.
The composer is a bit of an eclectic when it comes to music styles, and this massive soundtrack (over 150 tracks!) demonstrates his ability to seamlessly shift between them. What amazes me is how the game itself embraces this potpourri – of course you have the typical “epic film score” tracks with a bit of “soulful piano” mixed in, but he also incorporates stereotypical French street jams, smooth jazz, screamo rock ballads, pop-electronica beats, and some really interesting vocal music that fully utilizes the vocal range of Alice Dupoit-Percier. I also really appreciated this soundtrack because it was a great demonstration of the styles I was learning about in my electronic music class – the composer comes at all this music from an electronic background, so it was fun to “see under the hood” and try to figure out how he created certain effects.
-Jedi: Survivor, Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab
As many of you know, I’m a huge John Williams fan. His music is the kind that I can go back to over and over and still find layers yet uncovered. This soundtrack is not by him, but evokes that same style while containing just as much depth and nuance. This has been on my heavy-rotation list for a couple of years now (ever since the game came out), and I’m still finding new layers to dissect.
-Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Gareth Coker
This is another one that I’ve been listening to for a while. I guess it’s become the musical version of “comfort food” for me – very consonant harmonies, a focus on vibe and feel, atmospheric and wide as the world in how it conveys the emotion of the landscapes.
Looking Ahead
This upcoming semester is the final semester of my master’s program at BU, which is simultaneously relieving and terrifying. Relieving, because it’s been a lot of work and I’m excited to be finished with homework and assignments. Terrifying, because I haven’t figured out what I want to do post-graduation and that was part of the reason I did a master’s program in the first place. I keep getting the feeling that things will work out (assuming that I’m doing my part, of course), but I still worry about being unemployed post-graduation and the fact that I don’t know where to focus my composition career.
But that’s a (more) future me problem, so in the meantime a (slightly less) future me will be doing a few cool things:
Seeing the premiere of Terra Branta Canadensis
Programming a recital entirely of pieces I’ve written (which will be tough considering I haven’t written enough chamber music yet…)
Doing an independent study course where I get to study John Williams’ career and music!
Hopefully passing all my courses
Continuing my TA position(s)
Maybe experiencing a Nor’easter at some point? Weather prediction models say Boston is going to have a hard winter this year, so the odds are better than last year.
Conducting a stake production of The Lamb of God
And assuming all goes well, graduating from BU in May!
Final Musing
Being honest, this semester has been tough. Not that grad school is easy, even when everything is going well, but the last few months saw a lot of extraordinary challenges come up that were often unexpected or unlooked-for. I knew that this was going to be a heavier semester credit-wise, but what I didn’t expect was the ripple effect that would have on my regular commitments. I guess one way to characterize things would be to say that I was constantly putting out fires – where in a normal semester this would happen every so often, this semester I was going from one fire to the next with few or no breaks in between. Thankfully, I survived and passed all my classes which means that I get to have a lighter credit load next semester and (hopefully) spend the majority of my time working on my thesis project.
Perhaps because of all these challenges, I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of suffering. Theologically, I believe that suffering is the price we must pay to obtain better things in the future, whether that’s exaltation in a heavenly kingdom or a deeper relationship with a loved one. But for whatever reason, I seem to have trouble justifying that cost especially in the moment; or as C.S. Lewis said, that “no future bliss can make up for [some temporal suffering]…”. But the hope I have is that future me will be able to look back on these things and feel that they are worth the cost; or to quote C.S. Lewis again, that “…Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”
As a composer, I often think about the role that suffering plays in the music I write – is music inherently better if the composer was suffering while writing it or not? I can think of many examples that illustrate both sides of the argument, so I don’t know if there is a definitive answer to that question. But my hope is that, since I can’t choose when or whether to experience difficulties, my music lifts and heals regardless of what I was experiencing at the time I wrote it.
I know this is a bit of a downer, but lest you get too concerned I am feeling much more optimistic about things thanks to wonderful friends and family. And situationally things are already looking better than they were last semester, so I hope to have a much more positive musing in 4 months for my next update.
Until next time,
-JW
