The Distance Between Us - Full Band Set with Score

“The Distance Between Us” begins with imagery of an older person sitting on a porch sewing a quilt, a metaphor for the fabric of America. An oboe solo opens the work like threading a needle through the fabric of the quilt. The oboe theme continues through several instruments until midway through the piece. As instruments enter, we see people busy in their lives, working together in harmony and building into the full band density, a theme of collaboration and unity. 
 
As the density fades away, the initial thread has moved from the Oboe at the beginning, through Clarinets and Saxes, then to the Tubas. The statement is heard in the Bassoon - finding ourselves in a hospital bed on a heart monitor (Eb Clarinet) and a ventilator (Soft Snare Drum Rolls) - where our wonderful person introduced at the beginning of the piece in the oboe solo has died from COVID-19. 
 
The Oboe mourns this loss as the rest of the band starts echoing the despair we feel about this time in our lives, specifically the descending line in the Tenor Sax (and later in the Trombones and Horns). As more instruments join in this mourning and despair, the bass line begins descending like none of this will ever end. But trumpets enter, bringing comfort to those in mourning and hope to those in despair. Those in mourning begin to rise. 
 
The despair ends on a climactic tetrachord (Db, Ab, Eb, Bb) orchestrated a fifth apart from each other, which I intend to represent “the distance“ of the piece. The Trumpets “remind” the rest of the ensemble of the theme from earlier when we were all living our lives together in harmony (the earlier moment of density before Coronavirus) to resolve “the distance between us.” Even though we are apart, we are never truly alone. And our subject from the opening returns in the Bell Solo, looking upon all of us from the stars at peace that they can move on to the next step in their eternal journey.