The piece elicits the multifaceted feelings of grief beginning with the trombone playing a solemn lyrical line in A minor against a quiet backdrop of ascending sixteenths of intervals of sixths and fifths
Stormy, Husky, Brawling takes its name from the fourth line of the poem Chicago, written by Carl Sandburg in 1916 when Chicago was the heart of the meatpacking and railroad industries.