HAVENS

“Home is the starting place of love, hope, and dreams.”
 

Home is where the heart is. Everyone has a haven, a place they feel safe and can grow from. With HAVENS I wanted to
write a piece that represented the human soul and the need to find home. The piece is broken down into three parts: The
Departure, The Journey, and The Homecoming.
 

The beginning of the piece represents the leaving of home and memories- it’s warm and intimate using a small amount of the ensemble. As the listener departs on this journey we enter a more serious turn from our original warm tone. The second part, The Journey, deals with the things we cannot control and how it may take control of us. The listener goes through this journey of life and all the paths it takes you on. While the piece gets faster and there is more dissonance a third theme- a theme of return- enters. As the piece reaches a climax of both darkness and trouble, the piece and the listener return home. Slowly the piece goes from darkness to light and we return home, even though for both the listener and the piece it is not the same as the beginning, it is the feeling of return- returning to memories, friends, family, and dreams. Antiphonal trumpets and expanded percussion enter the piece and we return to our Haven, a place we call home, that is filled with
color and warmth. We all get homesick as we continue on this thing called life, however if we use the memories we collect, the love we gain, and the people we’ve grown to love through this journey, we are never alone and we are never
far away from home.