square waves
Instrumentation: Concert Band
Purchase: Contact composer directly
Duration: 5:00
Story: Written for Christian Lozano and the Canyon Springs High School Wind Ensemble
World Projects 2026 New York Sounds of Spring Festival
On the open ocean, “square waves” are an unusual pattern of wave activity that forms when the wind and currents are just right (or wrong) – a chessboard pattern of nonparallel waves moving in continuous oppositional motion. This kind of wave pattern looks really cool from afar but can be dangerous to boats and life-threatening to swimmers as the currents push and pull in unpredictable and conflicting ways. Life, especially lately, can sometimes feel like being trapped in square waves: multiple stimuli pushing you one way and then another with little sense of control over the process or ability to understand the patterns being hurled at you.
The music tries to mimic the idea of square waves by employing constant oppositional intervallic motion – it starts with the clarinets and flutes moving against each other and by the end of the piece, all the instruments have been swept up in the current, so to speak. The piece begins with slow lyricism and builds to a climactic series of wave crashes at rehearsal letter D. These waves eventually calm back down until the oppositional motion almost completely ceases and the sea returns to normal in the last bar.
Purchase: Contact composer directly
Duration: 5:00
Story: Written for Christian Lozano and the Canyon Springs High School Wind Ensemble
World Projects 2026 New York Sounds of Spring Festival
On the open ocean, “square waves” are an unusual pattern of wave activity that forms when the wind and currents are just right (or wrong) – a chessboard pattern of nonparallel waves moving in continuous oppositional motion. This kind of wave pattern looks really cool from afar but can be dangerous to boats and life-threatening to swimmers as the currents push and pull in unpredictable and conflicting ways. Life, especially lately, can sometimes feel like being trapped in square waves: multiple stimuli pushing you one way and then another with little sense of control over the process or ability to understand the patterns being hurled at you.
The music tries to mimic the idea of square waves by employing constant oppositional intervallic motion – it starts with the clarinets and flutes moving against each other and by the end of the piece, all the instruments have been swept up in the current, so to speak. The piece begins with slow lyricism and builds to a climactic series of wave crashes at rehearsal letter D. These waves eventually calm back down until the oppositional motion almost completely ceases and the sea returns to normal in the last bar.