FOLDING EARTH (2025) for orchestra
Instrumentation: orchestra (2+picc.2+ca.2+bcl.3(1 cbn) / 4.3.2+btbn.1 / timp.3perc / hp.pno / str)
Duration: ~14 minutes
Performance/Recording History:
Premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra and Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor on March 30, 2026 at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, NY.
Read by the Juilliard Orchestra and Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor on November 17, 2025 at The Juilliard School in New York City, NY.
Awards:
Selected as a winner of Juilliard’s 2025-26 Orchestra Competition
Selected as the winner of Juilliard’s 2026 Palmer Dixon Prize (a yearly award for a work composed in the current school year that the faculty collectively deem to be "most outstanding”)
Program Notes:
In August of 2025, I took a trip to the Canadian Rockies with my family. I had heard amazing things about this area of the world and seen beautiful pictures online, but nothing could have prepared me for being there in person. I was astounded by the sheer beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the cerulean lakes and rivers that weave their way through the peaks and valleys. In particular, I was fascinated by the very distinct layers of rock that make up the mountains in Banff National Park. As we biked through the park, I began to imagine the formation of the mountains. I saw the tectonic plates colliding, compressing and folding Earth’s surface until slabs of land rose into the sky. It dawned on me that the mountains are not static entities existing outside the passage of time, but that they morph and evolve, just as we do. The lives of both humans and mountains are fundamentally cyclic, albeit on very different time scales. And how beautiful that my life cycle aligned with that of the Canadian Rockies so I got the chance to witness their majesty.
Folding Earth is a reflection on the idea of overlapping cycles and their omnipresence in nature. The piece begins with a simple statement of eight chords; this is the primary cycle cell, and it returns in countless guises throughout the work. Patterns and sequences start to compile on top of one another, and gradually, a melody emerges. More and more cycles are introduced and they quickly gain speed and intensity. Finally, all of the cycles meet, and the mountains rise up from the Earth. The melody returns and is finally allowed to sing out unrestricted, an ardent ode to the mountains in all their glory.