Lake Flight

Lake Flight began as a piece focused on the Great Salt Lake. As a Utahn, the New York Times got my attention when it featured coverage of the Great Salt Lake’s low water levels in 2022. The title of the piece was planned as a double meaning—not only sensations of flight over a lake, but also the “flight” of the lake—the lake disappearing. While this idea helped start the piece, I soon moved away from the idea of depicting the lake’s water loss and toward trying to engage with the lake on a basic musical and emotional level. Having grown up in Salt Lake City, my memories of the lake center around views that were accessible on the streets near my house; the lake, this shining, distant, omnipresent thing, with most of it extending past the field of vision into whatever lay beyond, was a reminder of the openness of space, and, in one small way, the immensity of the universe. When I wrote this piece, I was living in Montclair, New Jersey, where, in a very similar way, walking a few streets away would give me a view of Manhattan, the forests of the region, and the Atlantic Ocean. It occurred to me one day while working on this piece that an ocean and a lake are not far off, one just being far larger. In the great scheme of things, both are very small.

The finished piece, then, is a combination of these and other influences; I find it to have elements of both the rural and “pastoral” environment of the Great Salt Lake and of my view of New York and its bay, with its driving rhythm and urbanism. The opening “ripple” on B♭, which forms the basis for both the first and last movements, seems to suggest to me looking out into the distance and seeing the endless expanse of blue water meeting blue sky. At the beginning of I, this ripple idea calls out and beckons for the listener to fly towards it. The pulsating notes also seem to suggest a heartbeat, making this idea into a living thing. Beneath all this, the “distant” B sonority soon appears and reflects the immense space we are soaring over. Throughout the three movements, further ideas contribute to these sensations, though not in a literal way, and there are other ideas better left open to interpretation. With its three movements, the piece is roughly in A- B-A' form, which, among other things, mirrors a “flight” with a return to the ground (though not necessarily in the same place).

I am immensely grateful to Jason Hardink for making this project possible and for bringing it to fruition.