Watershed

Listen to the work here!
 
Watershed is a work for solo tuba with piano accompaniment, inspired by and dedicated to by high school band director, who is himself a tuba player. I am currently primarily focused on the art of percussion performance and composition, although the beginning of my musical journey was as a pianist at the age of 4. I was planning on joining my high school’s jazz band to play piano when I began ninth grade, but due to a combination of “Whoops!” and “Well what about…” and “Would you like to…”, I ended up instead playing synthesizer in the front ensemble of my high school’s marching band, and I would end up only later joining the jazz band as a pianist starting in my sophomore year. In the meantime however, my band directors encouraged me to take up percussion when the marching band season had ended, as that was fundamentally what the front ensemble of the marching band was a section of, and I was fortunate enough with my minimal experience to qualify for my county’s honor band. This honor band performance, which included the frantic energy of Shostakovich’s Galop from Moscow, Cheremushky and John Mackey ’s Undertow, led me to quickly fall in love with the universe of percussion music, and I began to dedicate a lot of time to my percussive abilities. By the time I had graduated high school and committed to starting college as a percussion performance major, I realized that my high school band director may have literally been a living watershed that altered the course of my life, and this work is dedicated to the great deal that his instruction meant to me.