Chandeliers (2025) for Concert Band

“Look to the night sky, for there is much to see.

Some will note stars, while others will see galaxies. Some will view the planets, and others will revel in the vastness of the universe. Its infinity is breathtaking… and frightening. One cannot help but feel minuscule compared to this infinite nothing, bright and full and beautiful as it is. It is easy to forget the real things: The stars. The planets. The galaxies. It is easy to forget their magnificence.

The stars are always there, of course, hanging above us like so many melancholic chandeliers begging our attention. Sometimes we just forget to look.

And they are beautiful.”

Begun with and supported by Albert Aguilar and the San Antonio Community Wind Ensemble (SACWE), Chandeliers is my deep dive into living with depression and anxiety and what it means to find beauty in life despite the challenges we face. From October 2022 to February 2023, unbeknownst to me, I was living through the most severe depressive episode of my life. I was formally diagnosed with severe depression and generalized anxiety (on top of my existing combined-type ADHD) in March of 2023 and began treatment soon after. Broken Glass was written during this time, in January of 2023. To this day, it remains one of my most difficult and sincere pieces. It is an exploration of rock bottom that I wrote at rock bottom. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was expressing my feelings in the piece that, no matter what I did, it would fail and everybody around me was just watching me fall, glad that it wasn’t them, much like one does if a waiter drops a glass in a restaurant. To this day I have not talked about this time openly, not even to my own family. Those who have experienced these hardships almost certainly understand this feeling and will probably also understand that I will likely never do so. They are painful memories and powerful emotions that drove me to my deepest lows, but also led to the decisions that define who I am today, over two years later at the time of writing.

The idea that struggles, no matter how difficult, are temporary, and that there are beauty and reason in all things has been a motivator for me. I have always been a lover of beauty in simplicity. I love things that serve a purpose but also act as an example of the best that they can be. Sure, I mean physical objects like backpacks or pens and pencils, but I also believe in my personal drive to find fulfillment in being the best, most straightforward version of myself. I believe that, for my wife and for my children, the best person that I can be is someone who is knowledgeable but not complicated, who is happy but willing to accept fault. Of course, I struggle and fight every day against the person that I was, but every day is a new opportunity to be the best person that I can be. Chandeliers uses imagery of desolation and loneliness (inspired by my love of literature about arctic exploration) as an allusion to our struggles to rise above these forces and the persistence required to do so.

Render made in Finale 26 with Noteperformer 5.