Desolate Void, Ecstatic Flight (2024)

Overture for orchestra (3 [1.2.picc] 2 2 2 – 4 3 3 1 – t+3[4 opt.] – str)

Duration ca. 7’00’’

Desolate Void, Ecstatic Flight is a deeply personal work about overcoming all-encompassing, torturing emptiness. I wrote this piece in a chaotic period of transition, having just moved to a new city and finding myself in the midst of a months-long, rollercoaster struggle with bouts of arresting depression. Despite meaningful support from loved ones and mentors, this time proved to be both highly challenging and difficult to break out of—I went weeks at a time without writing a single new note of music, despite my constant efforts.

Through this struggle, I discovered that (for me), the only way to get out of the endless doldrums was to put my head down and lose myself in my work. To search for the void within with both hands and strangle it. I have been able to reclaim some land for myself out of the blackness by aggressively attacking the feelings of negativity as they come – to that end, I wrote the short poem on the last page of the score in December of 2023, forming the narrative basis of the work.