Many of the moments in a composer’s life these days involve tussling with notation software and enduring the bleet-blort playback of a laptop’s cheesy midi mockups. As a composer, you relish the promise of the sound inside your head one day coming to fruition. It’s a leap of faith to hand over a score to a large ensemble and trust that you’ve given them a suitable roadmap to discover and gracefully inhabit the sound world that you’ve imagined.

Recently I had golden moment of composer bliss, when I got to hear the Oregon Mandolin Orchestra beautifully perform “Nests”, a piece I wrote some 13 years ago. I’m so grateful they played my music, and their performance was a stunner. They sound better than ever under the capable direction of maestro Christian McKee.

Another one of those evanescent moments that replenishes the fuel to keep rolling forward happened on December 6, 2025, when the Arnema Orchestra in Porto, Portugal recorded my arrangement of My Witness is the Empty Sky for String Orchestra.

When the opportunity presented itself to have a piece played by Arnema Orchestra, I considered submitting one of the pieces that I’ve been brooding over for a long time. But instead, I had a last-minute inspiration to arrange a solo piano piece which I had just written and recorded on my Something Good Will Come album. And that’s how My Witness Is The Empty Sky for String Orchestra came into being. 

I’m deeply grateful to Armena Orchestra, who under the baton of maestro Sílvio Cortez, beautifully brought the piece to life at Arda Recorders. This studio recording isn’t just documentation; it’s the first time this piece has existed as sound, rather than imagination or notation. It gives the piece a voice that I can now share—with listeners, with conductors, with future performers, and with anyone who might find something resonant within it. 

I hope you enjoy it!  Watch the video here on youtube.

“My witness is the empty sky. My reward is the perfect blue sky at dawn in the desert in a bird-resounding riverbottom grove.” 

– Jack Kerouac, Some of the Dharma