Seas of the Moon

Winner of the 2023 Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition and selected repertoire for the 2025 Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition. This suite is inspired by four imaginatively named regions on the moon. Early humans gazed at the brilliant moon and saw what appeared to be seas and oceans separating continents and islands. While we now know that the moon is desolate and completely devoid of bodies of water, these names of lunar regions stuck and are fantastically descriptive. The first movement, Mare Vaporum (Sea of Vapors), suggests an impressionist seascape, with foam and fog roiling about. With long lyrical lines and free rhapsodic rhythms, the bassoon imagines the changing shapes of water and clouds.

I. Mare Vaporum (Sea of Vapors)
II. Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises)
III. Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold)
IV. Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms)