• Piccolo, 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 3 Bb Clarinets, 2 Bassoons
• 4 F Horns, 3 Bb Trumpets, 3 Trombones (3=Bass Trombone), Tuba
• Timpani + 3 Percussion
  • Percussion 1: Crash Cymbals, Vibraphone, Tam-tam
  • Percussion 2: Suspended Cymbal, Marimba 1 (not shared), Triangle, Whip
  • Percussion 3: Bass Drum, Marimba 2 (not shared)
• Piano
• Tuba Soloist
• Strings

Higher Ground begins and ends with a chaconne, a musical form where a repeating bass line gradually blossoms into something larger. I have long been drawn to chaconnes for their ability to make bass lines sound melodic through sheer persistence. This reverses the roles we often expect in music, where higher voices typically carry the tune and lower ones provide support. The tuba, the lowest of brass instruments, rarely stands at the center of the stage, so I found the chaconne to be a fitting way to highlight its voice—one that grounds the ensemble yet carries its own capacity to sing.

The concerto unfolds in three movements: the opening chaconne, an abrupt interruption that gives way to a slow, spacious canticle inspired by Palestrina, Gabrieli, and Vaughan Williams, and a final movement that picks up where the first left off. I think of the middle movement as the heart of the work, where the tuba has room to sing as a soprano might in an aria. Throughout, the music rises: from textures surging upward from bass lines, to harmonies in endless ascent through Shepard tones, to melodies that climb even as the ground beneath them descends.

This obsession with rising gave the concerto its title. Higher Ground reflects both the ground bass of the chaconne and the music’s continual striving upward. It is, for me, a way of celebrating the tuba—an instrument whose lowest notes provide the foundation from which everything else can grow.

The concerto was first written in 2019 for tuba and wind ensemble, commissioned by a consortium led by Dr. Dan Tembras and tubist Chance Trottman-Huiet. In its first iteration, the concerto planted seeds of harmonies and ideas I have since honed through iterative work during the intervening years—especially Vital Sines and Full Circle, a short piece that cultivates some similar ground. By 2024, I was ready to return to the concerto with more mature ears, revising and rewriting it extensively for orchestra in collaboration with the Albany Symphony and tubist Justin Benavidez. For this album, the new version—Higher Ground—stands as both a revision and a renewal: a work that honors the original while expanding its voice, just as the tuba itself transforms when lifted from the ensemble’s foundation into the spotlight.