Electric City is inspired by the colorful, glowing, metropolitan beauty of the big city at night. I say “the big city” as a general term; for me, this city is Dallas, Texas, a place that is quite close to my hometown and that I have seen and been to frequently. I am always in awe of both the visually pleasing colors of the night city as well as the powerful sense of vitality and life, and as I am frequently in Dallas to hear concerts performed by the Dallas Winds, I have grown to have a strong musical association with this night-life aesthetic. When Dr. Paul Nolen, the saxophone professor at Illinois State University, asked me to compose a work for the ISU Saxophone Studio, I had been particularly missing my home, and so I chose to act on my yearning and write Electric City as an ode to the beauty of Dallas at night.
Musically, the work is informed by both classical and non-classical music that I listen to, and particularly by one of my favorite songs, M83’s “Midnight City”. Inspired by the vividly descriptive lyrics of that song, Electric City can be heard as joyride through a big city that passes through sparkling lights and reflective skyscrapers in the dark of night, accelerating until a final gear shift sends us blazing into the darkness with the glow of the city behind us.