DESCRIPTION:
"Music education has taught me how to work with people. How to work with someone, learn each others weaknesses and strengths, and combine them to make something beautiful". - Lindsay

This piece is dedicated to a friend of mine from high school whose passion for music, despite our somewhat limited interactions, had a profound influence on me as a musician, and did a great deal to shape the way I look at music. I try to covey that with this brief five minute work, written for the Hillgrove High School Mastery Orchestra.

Program notes:

I wrote this piece over the past twelve months as reflection of what it is like to have loved and lost. It tries to embody the emotional cycle that the human spirit goes through when reflecting on someone who is loved dearly who is no longer there. It brings to light all the feelings that one might go through: the swelling feelings of immeasurable loss, sadness, anger, and uncertainty that follow the end of a relationship; the recollection of the happiest moments that love brings; the somber, reverent reflection on sweet and tender memories that permeate the mind and melt the heart; a return of sweeping indescribable emotion as you realize that those tender moments will never come again; and finally the realization that even though that person is no longer in your life for one reason or another, the best of them lives on within you, and they will never be forgotten.

To me, the single most memorable aspect of a person's appearance is their eyes, as they are the link between what lies on the outside and what lies within. When all else fades, and memories are washed away into the sea of time, a person can live on through an immortal image of their eyes. With this in mind, I titled the work "Endless Eyes", and wrote the following poem, after the work's completion:

Eyes as deep as space, running to the splendid source of all inspiration.
Eyes the color of creation, where stars are formed only inches away.
Endless Eyes, never fading, shining bright through the darkest night, holding a mystery only time will tell.

The sounds you hear come from Finale 2009.

"Listen Beyond Your Ears"-Yata for Luda