Appalachian Awakening

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Appalachian Awakening is an extended piece for mid-size jazz ensemble that expresses my love of the Appalachian Mountains. The idea for this music came to me when I was hiking in West Virginia. I was not intending to think about a new piece of music; however, all of a sudden I heard the opening of a bossa nova in my mind and it expressed to me the beauty of the surrounding mountains. Score demo by David Arivett. The instrumentation used in the demo is violin, alto flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, bassoon, piano, bass, and drums.

This is an unusual composition in how it combines bossa nova and fiddle music. The two sections were composed as one piece, with the fiddle unexpectedly emerging from the bossa nova. 

The mid-size ensemble score is for soloist (ideally, violin), 5 wind instruments, and rhythm section. Flexible instrumentation is used to enable the music to be played by many combinations of instruments. Mid-Size Ensemble describes the concepts that I used in this piece.