This work is available for purchase at Murphy Music Press here.
Cerulean Embers
Cerulean Embers represents two sides of the same coin in a narrative of how we react to hardship, loss, and missed opportunity. These two sides are separated simply by time. We naturally initiate our response to loss with a multi-level grieving process. In this way, the first half of the piece is a heart-wrenching elegy - starting first with a mournful solo cello line that ultimately bursts into thickly-orchestrated frustration and anger. Once the grieving process has run its course, there are several ways that loss can be viewed. In a perfect world, we can blissfully (even naïvely) celebrate an optimistic viewpoint of our past hardship as an opportunity to grow - optimizing the positive potential of our life experience. The second half of the piece creates that perfect world with a fanfare that has a relentless and bombastic energy. We are strengthened by our hardships, which ironically make life more meaningful.
