Let Us Pray

Program Notes

While the title of the piece is 'Let Us Pray', the composition is more spiritual than religious in scope and form. It is another tribute to the great American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017) and a mentor of mine who really changed my outlook on composition when I worked with him closely in February 2017. Maslanka was a very spiritual person, and that often reflected itself in his music through his use of chorales and American folk tunes. In this piece, I chose to quote his Symphony No. 4, which was the piece that really defined spirituality in music for me, and my piece as a whole is a meditation on the influence of this great composer had not only on me, but on multiple generations of composers.