On a day back amidst the chaos that was April of 2020, I came home from work feeling more anxious and nervous than usual. I remember that I had been reading a bunch of articles about the backlash from the Covid-19 restrictions that various governments around the world had put in place as well as the tragedies of the George Floyd riots. I guess it must have really hit me hard that day. I couldn’t really put into words what I was feeling, so I did what I always do; I sat down at my keyboard and started to play.

What came out was a twelve and half minute improv for the organ. Having said what I needed to say, I put it away, deciding that it was nothing that anyone would want to hear and that it felt a little too raw and personal for me to share in its current form.

A few months later, I opened it up and gave it a listen, as I usually do with all of my music, and was surprised to find that I “heard” something more for this piece of random stream of consciousness writing. I guess I wasn’t done with it. Over the next few months, I began to mold and shape this thing into something a bit more logical and, more importantly, more listenable.

What emerged as the finished piece of music is called ‘When Falls the Night: A Fantasy for Orchestra and Choir’.

I had a grand plan for this tune. I began putting together a video made of headlines and pictures from the first year of the pandemic. The idea was that this tune would act as the score. However, it quickly became less an epic statement about an extremely tumultuous period of time and more of a Fifth Grade level slideshow! Lol. Unfortunately, I had already released the music under the title of my would-be video masterpiece, which is why it is also called ‘Stay Home’.